High On Fire
De Vermis Mysteriis

Guess the riddle...

You held it in your hand and didn't go blind, you had it above your bed and it wasn't a Paola Barale poster, you wore it and it wasn't herpes. What is it? What are you saying? The honorary card of the Verona Agricultural Fair? Please...

I'm talking about ''Sleep's Holy Mountain'' (and you who are reading, if you're clueless, shame on you, run to buy it at Mediaworld where it's €9.90, shame on you again and then disappear from the face of the Earth), a massive and unparalleled pillar of magniloquent stoner/doom. I'm talking about ''that round thing'' that as a youngster you put, hypnotized and almost unaware, in the stereo on the top right shelf of your room, just before your nagging mom came to yell at you to turn down the volume asking if you were on drugs.

It's likely you don't care a fig but Matt Pike has always been my favorite Sleep member. Sorry for Cisneros but that's how it is. His existence as a long-haired stinker stuck midway between the conviction of being the new messiah (or the new Iommi which is the same thing) and the unwavering determination to find any excuse not to take a shower even in August, was an indelible part of my adolescence. Even more so than ''Mtv on the Beach'', to be clear. High on Fire, his personal creation of the new millennium, represented a tasty (albeit palliative) appendix to that incredible glow (and consequent void) of the nineties that also left us with the meditative contemplations of the OM house. ''The Art of Self Defense'' and ''Surrounded By Thieves'' are albums that start harmless and fun as a little fart in the bathtub becomes overwhelming and annoying when their essence surfaces. Big records.

The journey of our heroes, already with ''Death Is The Communion'' an irritating thread in its aim to draw from all the known metal universe, with ''Snakes For The Divine'' had become more discouraging than I could have imagined: here comes the definitive landing at the ''no-longer-just-stoner'' for an album that was like ordering the worst house wine at a lobster and oyster dinner: at that moment it's all well and good but the abdominal pains and dry mouth the following morning inevitably present the bill. From children of a lesser Sabbath to suitors of the Iron Virgin in Lemmy sauce, the step was short; a blessing for many but for me, who still gets intoxicated today with the opening riff of ''From Beyond'', it wasn't exactly like that. Pride and frustration. But I have learned not to hold grudges and, in these two years, I even recognize I have partly reconsidered it (like house wines at restaurants, after all, albeit only for mere pecuniary reasons). In short: their music had changed and in the end, it was me who had to come to terms with it.

Maybe it's my self-persuasion, maybe it's because I can't make my salary stretch even to the end of the first week anymore (so no oysters and lobsters) or perhaps it's the excessive sugar accumulation post-Easter egg, but I'm really enjoying the new album.

With ''De Vermis Mysteriis'', a heavy concept inspired by the dark adventures of Jesus' twin brother (well... what a coincidence...) who died at birth and was later resurrected as a time traveler, the HoF managed to bring out the best of their now consolidated ''art of self-defense''. With the recognizable flavor of Kurt Ballou (which becomes pure magnetism in the instrumental ''Samsara''), Matt and company dispense the right dose of dirtiness, heavy metal, stoner, and post-core, sweeping away all recent embarrassments and landing at a more reformist version of violence and substance, without too many ambitions of form. Engaging with ''Fertile Green'', full of guitars halfway between Candlemass and Crimson Glory played at the speed of Entombed, becoming infatuated with ''Bloody Knuckles'' (or Black Sabbath sliced by the overpowering force of Converge), being suffocated by the monolithic acidity of the riff-work of ''Madness Of An Architect'' will become your daily bread, or better yet, your Body of Christ, before the thunderous Lombardian patterns of ''Spiritual Rites'' and the malignant epicness of ''King of Days'' purify you of all evils and make you give thanks to our lord Pike.

And who knows, maybe in about twenty years we'll find it for €9.90 at Mediaword...