What’s the purpose of live albums? Fillers while ardent fans await the next studio release? “Contractual obligation”? Money spinners? Memento for those in attendance? Homework for those that weren’t? Fifteen years and six albums in and High On Fire are releasing another live album – recorded in late 2012 – this time in not one but two parts, no, sorry, “volumes”. Featuring career-spanning material, the combined track listing is a pretty good representation of the band at their best, and so is the performance. As on the band’s studio releases, Kensel’s drumming is tight, his sledgehammer-heavy beats spitting sweat from the speakers, Matz’s low register rumble is all a-thunder, Pike’s guitar spews out angry riffs and reverbed-into-the-cosmos lead breaks, and his gargled growl is gargantuan.
Listening to the albums back to back provides an interesting overview of the band’s development as they made the long transition from the-guy-from-Sleep’s-other-band to become accepted as a band in their own right. ’10,000 Years’ (on Vol.1) and ‘Blood From Zion’ (the penultimate track on Vol.2) from their 1999 debut EP stand up well against the more recent material, particularly that from 2012’s De Vermis Mysteriis. What lets these two albums down is that they aren’t being released as one. It could have been released as a double-CD digipack with all the trimmings. They could have perhaps knocked off a track or two and released it as one CD. Better yet, they could have recorded a live DVD with a bunch of extras such as interviews, backstage antics, sound-check footage, perhaps even including the compulsory footage shot from the tour bus window of mountains in the distance as they make their way across the deserts of New York City…
As an advertisement for High on Fire shows, it’s a pretty good campaign, as it is for the rest of their catalogue. A necessity? Not really. One for the completists? If you must. New to the band? Check out 2012’s De Vermis Mysteriis. Or you could just go see them live.
6/10
Jason Guest