Rhapsody Reviews: Snakes for the Divine

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High on Fire's fifth album, Snakes for the Divine, features all the tundra-galloping riffs and Matt Pike-battlefield-shouting that fans of this truly badass band have come to expect. But last album Death Is This Communion went in a psychedelic direction, and the band's earlier records fed stoner rock anabolic steroids and sent it to the weight room. Snakes, on the other hand, combines the machine-gun spray of classic thrash with rapid changes in direction, neck-snapping stops and starts, and even the Maiden-friendly overdubbed guitar leads of fantasy metal, making for an album that is practically neo-Viking metal.

From the ribboning open of the titular first track, Pike, longtime drummer Des Kensel and bassist Jeff Matz (formerly of Zeke) charge through an obstacle course of eight epically structured, six-minute-plus songs, seemingly taking their cues from Bathory's berserker metal masterpiece "Shores in Flames," albeit with state-of-the-art production values. That means Pike screams bloody hell over endlessly thick, mercilessly fast-paced chuggering and the nonstop pound of a telepathic rhythm section. Matz and Kensel, for their part, form a battery every bit as powerful as when underground metal linchpin Joe Preston was in the band and they delivered HoF 2005 high point, Blessed Black Wings.

While Snakes for the Divine is steeped in the chunkity-chunk of classic Bathory and a cross-pollination of doom and thrash metal that is all HoF's own, "Bastard Samurai" bears the marks of the psychedelia of days past, with phased guitars and a space caravan-worthy bassline that echoes Sleep's Holy Mountain. Also of note are "Frost Hammer" and "Holy Flames of the Firespitter," two songs that not only feature a barbaric horde singing backup but prove Pike can still write totally awesome titles. According to a Spin interview with the dude, the song "Snakes for the Divine" is about the mingling of human DNA with, uh, alien reptiles that created the Earth or something. But the important thing is that the album kicks ass. So Pike's not penning thunderous yeti poems here but you know ... still a weirdo. And the ass-kicking, let's not forget the ass-kicking.