High On Fire had some unexpected downtime following frontman Matt Pike‘s partial toe amputation. The  surgery forced the band to cancel their planned November shows, however they had some time to record new material.

While they haven’t elaborated on what those sessions will produce, they have confirmed that it will arrive as part of next year’s traditional ‘Record Store Day‘ series of releases, which looks set to take place on April 20th. Their last album, Luminiferous received rave reviews across multiple magazines and their recent album, Electric Messiah hit stores this past October.

In total, High on Fire have released eight albums and three live albums. Over the course of Pike’s nearly thirty year period of releasing records, he has come to be seen as a modern metal legend, with fans often comparing him to Motorhead frontman Lemmy.

In a recent interview, Pike talks about the inspiration for his latest album, “I was thinking about themes for the record (Electric Messiah) and when Lemmy died… I knew Lemmy a little bit, he was a big hero to me and I was on tour with, I fucking loved the guy. The day he died I happened to be at a friend’s tattoo shop and I got this tattoo. I had this dream a couple of days later where Lemmy was kind of hazing me because people keep calling me the American Lemmy, which I’m fucking not.”

Pike continues, “That guy was so above me. I wouldn’t desecrate his memory like that, but I did want to do a tribute to him and every time we went through that song it was ‘the Lemmy song’ and we came up with some funny working titles and it was initially, ‘Insect Workout With Lemmy’ and eventually we came up with ‘Electric Messiah, which sounds like a fucking great album title. The rest of the record has a lot more themes on it, it’s not just blowing hot air up Lemmy’s dead ass.” With the band hinting at a 4/20 release date, fans are excited to see what new material will be unearthed.

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat