Grammy award-winning heavy metal band High On Fire is not slowing down. For over twenty-six years, the powerhouse Oakland-based band has been a leading voice in heavy metal, known for their impressive, electrifying riffs and ability to fuse multiple metal subgenres, such as Thrash and Sludge, to create a sound that is as hypnotic as it is ravenous. Their ninth studio album, Cometh The Storm, sees previous touring member Coady Willis step into the role of the official High On Fire drummer after the departure of Des Kensel in 2019. 

Caught between touring Europe this past summer and gearing up for their North American Fall Tour, mxdwn had the pleasure of sitting with all three band members, Matt Pike (vocalist), Jeff Matz (bass) and Coady Willis (percussion) to discuss everything from their comedic-forward writing approach to High On Fire’s impact and legacy on the world of heavy metal.

mxdwn: I’ll go ahead and get started. My name is Riley and I’m a music feature writer here at mxdwn. Today I’m joined by Matt Pike, Jeff Matz and Coady Willis from High On Fire. How are you all doing today?

Matt Pike: Good. Are they there? I can’t see them. 

Jeff Matz: I’m good, {laughing} I’m here. 

MP: {laughing} It doesn’t matter, I don’t need to see them. I didn’t know you guys were there. It’s fine, I can hear him. It doesn’t matter though. We do radio ones sometimes and we all say the same stuff. 

mxdwn: Alright cool, we’ll just run with it then! To just jump right in you all recently got back from an extensive European tour this summer. You performed at multiple headlining shows and esteemed festivals such as Copenhell, Resurrection, and even headlining the last day of Sonic Blast in Portugal. Do you have any specific memorable times from this summer?

MP: Well going backwards, Sonic Blast was amazing. Oh, I saw Jeff for a moment. 

JM: I mean, the entire summer run was pretty amazing. Played at a lot of great festivals. It was our first time doing the main stage at Hellfest so that was pretty cool, that was a really good one. Resurrection festival was pretty insane, one of the craziest audience responses. 

MP: Yeah the lights at that place went over the whole tent and it has these fake flames and they look real. 

JM: That was in Belgium at Graspop, the crazy flames. 

MP: Oh I thought that was at Resurrection, pardon me. 

JM: That was another good one. There were so many {laughs}. 

MP: Yeah

JM: It was a crazy summer. I was actually over in Europe for two and a half months total. I didn’t come home between our main Europe run and the Sonic Blast fest. I ended up hanging out in Istanbul for three weeks and then popped over to Portugal, and my wife and I did a little holiday there before the festival. So yeah, I kinda became European for a while. 

{All laugh}

mxdwn: You were over there for so long, was it a big culture shock coming back to the US?

JM: I’m pretty used to the back and forth by now at this point.

MP: Jeff’s a secret Turkish gangster. He’s got stuff over there, you know. 

{All laugh}

JM: Secret doings. 

mxdwn: I’ve heard amazing things about Istanbul and Portugal, both are on my bucket list for sure. I bet that must have been an amazing experience though, being able to headline an entire festival and take the main stage at Hellfest. 

MP: Yeah I was surprised at the lunchtime crowd. I think we played at 12:05 and there were so many people. It was like 30,000 or something people right in front of us right when we went on, It wasn’t like that ten minutes before. I was like, “Woah, dude! That’s a trip.”, so it went really well. It was cool. 

mxdwn: I was looking at the comments on all of those festivals on Instagram and everyone across all the festivals were saying that your set was amazing, completely rocking their world. The energy was there, the crowd was there with the energy as well. It’s just gotta be great to perform for all those people, 30,000 is a lot of people, and have the experiences go like that. 

MP: I’m not sure, I didn’t count, but it was a sea of people at noon. Festivals don’t always go that smoothly. I think this run went really smoothly because we have a good set or something. There’s a lot of stuff that can happen on a stage that big. It’s kind of nerve wracking.

mxdwn: Even after how long you’ve been performing? 

MP: Well, we’ve shown up to shows and there were no monitors, because we didn’t ask for them {laughs}, you know what I mean. Weird stuff like that can happen. 

JM: Things can always go sideways. Especially on big festivals where you know, sometimes you’re not using your own equipment or it’s not your own monitor engineer. {laughing} Things can definitely go sideways. But we were really lucky this time around. Everything went smoothly for the most part. 

MP: The term “throw and go” comes to mind {laughs}. 

mxdwn: Well that’s good to hear. I have heard a lot of artists say that especially with big festivals, the logistics can get really complicated and it can be really hard to make sure everything goes smoothly. I’m glad to hear it worked out for you all this time around. You all recently, back in April, released your latest studio album Cometh The Storm, congratulations! 

MP:  Thank you. 

mxdwn: Of course. It’s the first record with Coady on the drums. As your producer Kurt Ballou stated, “It’s interesting whenever there’s a lineup change… it’s an opportunity to reinvigorate the band and I think that’s what happened here.” How do you think Coady’s introduction reinvigorated High On Fire with this record?

MP: I think I fucking crushed it {laughs}! 

{All laugh}

mxdwn: Yeah, you definitely crushed it! 

Coady Willis: Thanks, thanks. It’s a situation where it’s like, “This is it. We kinda have to commit, you know.” I’ve known these guys for a long time, in different bands. I’ve been on tour with these guys and I’ve been a fan of the band for a long time. It was cool to play music with them, to play the older songs. I kind of got a feel for, there’s just different feel things that happen in this band that are different from other bands I’ve been in. I’m glad I got to do some tours and play some shows, kind of get a feel for the energy, the groove and the anti-groove and everything that happens in all the different songs. I felt like by the time we got to write and record this, I kinda had a feel of where the band was coming from. I was able to put my own flavor on it without changing the feel of the band and keeping in line with the spirit of the songs and albums that came before, trying to give respect to all that and push the band forward. But I still play, try as I might, it’s still gonna sound like me when it happens. I was trying to serve the feelings of the songs and make sure that it sounded like High On Fire as much as I was able to make it sound like High On Fire. 

mxdwn: I think you did perfect on that! I feel like the drums on the record is one of the things that really stuck out to me other than you completely shredding it, Matt. 

MP: Oh I’m not egotistical like that {laughs}. I just do my part. I was gonna say the same thing, just Coady being himself made him fit in perfectly, because he was just being himself. That’s what this band is, an expression of an awkward heaviness at times, and at times really melodic and groovy heaviness. 

mxdwn: Yeah, I thought that the drums and Coady really brought a lot to this record. Not that these elements weren’t there before, but it did bring a little bit of a different energy towards the album. Fans and critics agreed as well, which is something I kept running into during my research, that Coady’s drumming really brought some of the driving force of this album that people were really into. 

CW: That’s great. I gotta give Kurt Ballou credit too, because we did spend a lot of time, I think we spent three days dialing in the drums and getting the drums sounding right, choosing microphones, switching out microphones and making sure the drums were tuned right. He’s really good at what he does. He really let me play like I play and he tailored the production to my style of drumming. I think that’s a testament to how good he is and his skills as a producer, that he wasn’t trying to hammer everything into a mold. He listened and figured out what was happening and tailored the production to that and it came out sounding great. I’m grateful for him for letting me be myself and play how I play and making it sound really cool. He did a really great job. 

MP: He kind of just lets it happen. He is meticulous in the aftermath, he is super meticulous after it’s formed itself. All the finishing touches, you know, he’s full of ideas. So to give him credit where credit’s due, for me. 

CW: Yes.  

mxdwn: That’s really the hallmark of a great producer. Someone who doesn’t try to overshadow everything but that just somehow knows how to bring out your natural sounds and elements in the studio. Someone who not only can bring those features out but who can amplify them as well, and who just lets you all be your great musical selves. I was going to ask a question about Kurt Ballou’s influence on the record, is there anything else you think he brought to the record that would have been missing without his production skills? 

JM: Certainly in terms of song arrangements and just helping us streamline things, he played a big hand in that. There were some points where we were running into roadblocks thinking, “God, does that song need another part?”, you know. Like, “Where should we go from here?” He offered a lot of ideas in those regards that helped us to make the songs leaner and meaner. 

CW: This is such a valuable asset to have in the studio, is an outside ear. 

MP: Yeah. 

CW: You become kind of emotionally attached after a while. You’re like, “ Oh, I really like this part.”. Then you get into the studio and someone needs to be like, “This part really doesn’t work.” {laughs} You’re like, “No! I worked so hard on that!” But you need that to happen. You need someone to be like, “No, actually, this is going to make it better if you do this.”, and to be able to say that without any emotional attachment to all the time you put into working that. You’re like, “Oh yeah, he’s right. It is better this way.” So yeah, it’s really nice to have that outside opinion where you can look at it objectively and make these decisions. 

MP: Yeah, I always get demo love. I’ll like three or four things that I just do not want to change. Even if I try to do them again, say I improv a super awesome solo or I did something with my voice, and I can’t do it again it kind of drives me nuts. That’s kinda what Coady’s talking about. You’re like, “Dude, I like that so much. Why isn’t it natural enough to sound the same?”, you know? It’s a thing you can run into. 

JM: When I’m listening to the working recordings, just the demos of the tunes, and yeah you get super attached to certain elements of it, little aspects. Things like tempos, or what Matt was saying and like specific solo bits or licks. If you can’t recreate it sometimes it feels a little disappointing at first, but typically you’ll learn to live with it and love the finished product. 

MP: Yeah. Like, do I wanna overdo it and split a bunch of hairs or do I want it just natural, am I not doing enough? All the questions {laughs}.

CW: When you’re demoing the songs, they’re being written for the first time. It’s kind of the most fun part for me because anything goes. It’s the first time you’re hearing the song come to life and hearing it become what it’s going to be. You’re like, “Oh, this is a song!”, so when you hear that for the first time it’s really fun. It’s easy to get attached to that. Then there’s the next step of taking that and making it into what it really needs to be, refining it. Being able to let go of some of those things is important. 

MP: Yeah, there’s a psychology to it all on its own for sure. 

mxdwn: I was gonna say, over here on the writing side of stuff we have a phrase of “kill your darlings” for that concept. It’s supposed to be like, you have these habits as a writer that you like to use and your editor gets your work and is like, “You gotta get rid of this writing tool you’ve used a million times.”, so good to know that it crosses all industries and they’re just as ruthless. Isn’t this your fifth time working with Kurt on your albums? 

MP: The fifth one! 

JM: Seems like it. Hmm, let’s see. 

MP: Ha! I like that answer. Seems like it {laughs}. 

{All laugh}

mxdwn: Definitely the hallmark of a great producer then, when you keep coming back and he’s able to work with your catalog for that long. He definitely knows your sound, how to bring it out of you and the best direction to go. 

JM: Yeah. 

MP: Yeah, he’s good with us for sure, indefinitely. 

JM: He understands the band and how we want to be represented on the album. I think that on this album, this is my favorite sounding album that he’s done with us. 

MP: Oh by far. 

JM: He just keeps getting better and better. 

mxdwn: Wow, what a great working relationship you have with him! Speaking of this being your best sounding album yet, Cometh The Storm is your ninth studio album, which is a really impressive number. How did making this album differ from the others, other than introducing Coady on the lineup? How did it differ from your previous albums, either in the actual process of writing it or your perspective coming into making this album? 

MP: Personalities, new knowledge. Jeff has been studying the saz. I think a lot of the Turkish music, which I was influenced by before, but not like Jeff who went and studied properly. I think a lot of that ended up really influencing the songwriting on this. Jeff wrote a good abundance of the music and I think it came out in a lot of his riffs, which I thought was really cool because it was a direction. Sometimes you’ve been playing so long you get stuck. You’re like, “I don’t know what to do to not sound the same.”. I think he brought that to the table, if he wants to elaborate. 

JM: Yeah I was definitely a big influence on the stuff that I brought for the album. I think the biggest factor for me was having Coady involved. Just the writing process and having his personality, enthusiasm and work ethic, that was really huge for just how these songs came together and the overall vibe of the album. It’s really different writing with different musicians. It tends to bring out different ideas in everybody. The kind of riffs we were coming up with jamming with Coady are somewhat different than say the rips we would come up with playing with Des. 

MP: Yeah. You can picture once you know one drummer, another drummer or another musician, you can kind of picture in your head when you have an idea of how they’d play it when you take it to them. If you can get that mental picture, it tends to flow really well if you’re thinking about them as an individual musician. It’s not such a tribal thing. It’s more of an individual take on thing, you know? I don’t know. I’m getting too complicated, I’m sorry {laughs}. 

mxdwn: Oh no! I feel like that makes perfect sense. Especially with bands who have been playing together for as long as you have, or even just being professionals for as long, the hallmark of that is being able to work together both as a unit and independently. Bringing it back to the Turkish influences on the album, especially with the album’s fifth track  “Karanlık Yol”, how did you find yourselves being inspired by that? I know you also said, Matt, that you explored that scope a little bit as well. 

MP: I think it just came out that way, it kinda had that same similar sound, Middle Eastern Turkish music. I happen to be kind of Turkish, I had a Turkish grandma. I don’t know if it’s DNA or not but I went down the rabbit hole with it and really got good with it. I was like, “Dude, I’m all into it!”. So it’s not something I opposed for sure. 

JM: I’ve been interested in that music since around 2006, when I first started with High On Fire. I had a friend of ours, Rich Doucette who played in the band Secret Chiefs 3, he turned me on to a lot of different kinds of folk music. Turkish, Persian and Indian classical music. The Turkish influence I really latched on to early on. A lot of the music I’ve written for High On Fire has that influence but I really dove into it in 2019 and started studying formally with a teacher in Istanbul. Did a ton of online lessons during the pandemic. I traveled to Istanbul a couple of times to study face to face with various teachers there. So that influence has been around for a while. There’s an instrumental track on Death is This Communion called “Khanrad’s Wall” and that was sort of my first foray into incorporating those influences into what we do. But it’s definitely more solidified on this last album. The instrumental track is my attempt at writing something in the style of Anatolian folk dance but mixed with heavy elements as well. But yeah, it’s all over the place. A lot of the riffs that I wrote on guitar, the heavy stuff, I’m pulling a lot from those scales I’ve learned studying the traditional tunes. Different phrasing and things, it’s just found its way into my musical DNA. 

MP: And it’s really good for heavy music. It just mixes right in there. 

mxdwn: It seems like such an opposite pairing but yeah, it really fits right in and meshes pretty perfectly. I feel like from the outside you wouldn’t think that they go together but they do. 

JM: Yeah that’s something that hit me early on. Listening to this stuff I was like, “God, this is heavy in a weird way.”. No distorted electric guitars or anything but there’s a certain rhythmic thrust behind it and just a lot of the note choices. It’s not too far removed from metal in some ways. 

MP: I also think that an observation about a lot of the instruments, they kind of already sound electric with just the way they resonate. It sounds like electricity is going through them even though they’re being played acoustically. I’ve always noticed that about them and thought it was really cool about that style of music. 

JM: The saz or the bağlama, which is the instrument I play, has a really buzzy sound. It sounds kind of aggressive for an acoustic instrument which I really like. It almost has a natural distortion to it. It’s interesting. 

mxdwn: I was going to say I had never thought of those instruments sounding electric while being acoustic, but now that you say it I can totally hear that in those instruments. You’re right, it’s exactly like a buzz. I also think it’s really interesting that you’re still learning as a musician, to the point of going to Istanbul to train and learn these different types of music. I feel that sometimes a lot of musicians get themselves stuck in a box at times of what they’re used to playing and what they’re good at and being able to branch out and do different things just shows how dedicated you are to your craft and dedication to continue to make this band what it is. It’s really interesting. 

JM: Thank you. 

mxdwn: Speaking of continuing to experiment, and I think you spoke a little on it earlier Matt, how when you play music for so long sometimes it does get repetitive and can be hard to break out of patterns and sounds you are used to. How do you all approach continuing to deliver your signature sound your fans expect from High On Fire while experimenting with new musical concepts and letting your creativity take the forefront? 

MP: Well I have to say that a lot of my better riffs in my whole career have come from me being ridiculous and trying to make the people in the room, the people in my band, laugh. Like, “Dude we should have a riff like this!” and it’s totally absurd. Then it turns into this crazy song and some of the better stuff was just taking a chance on being ridiculous and trying to make your friends laugh. Like, “I’m an asshole for playing this riff because it’s absurd!”. At least from my side of things {laughs}. 

JM: I agree. Sometimes, when you’re not trying to write something amazing, that’s when the best stuff comes out. When you’re just casually playing something or being silly {laughs} it’s funny how that works. 

MP: A lot of good things come from fucking off {laughing} and just jamming. Space jam. 

mxdwn: Yeah I feel that especially with music. I feel like all the times I’ve written my best music, and my friends as well, it’s when you’re just messing around and you write something that you’re not expecting to be so good or to take it as far as it goes but it always turns out to be some of the best stuff you’ve ever wrote. 

CW: I’ll always remember to fuck around. 

{All laugh}

mxdwn: What do you all think that incorporating these elements, and the secret ingredient of fucking around, adds to your music and the overall influence of the whole concept of High On Fire? 

MP: Well anything that sounds written now didn’t start that way {laughs}. 

JM: We try not to overthink it, keep it somewhat natural. That’s my take on the approach. Sometimes I’ll write things and it will hit me like, “Oh, this is something that would be great for High On Fire.” Other times it’s like, “Oh, this is cool, maybe it could work.” and we’ll try things out. There’s always certain parameters that I like to think about when writing stuff for this band. I think it’s really cool to expand and push the boundaries but there’s a certain aesthetic it has to fit within. 

MP: You have to be a carnivore! {laughs} Not really, that’s completely untrue. 

CW: One of the things that we did while writing this record that I thought was really cool and that helped bring some different flavors to it is that we would do different writing sessions broken into pairs. Some of the songs we had pulled from this riff vault that Matt and Jeff had written together and then we would do a session where it was just Jeff and I writing and coming up with riffs. Then we would do a session where it was just Matt and I. It gave everybody a chance to develop that chemistry a bit and then bring it back to the group again. With that there’s always one person in the group who has a fresh set of ears listening to the riff that the other two came up with and being like, “Well, maybe we should try this.” and so forth. But I thought it helped bring a different palette of flavors to the record. So all the songs weren’t written with us together in the same room but they were finished that way. I think it lets some different flavors into the mix. 

mxdwn: That’s really interesting. When talking to a lot of group bands I do hear how they all sit down together in one room to write, so I think it’s really interesting you all did it that way and does help to keep things fresh. 

CW: Yeah.

MP: Sometimes it offers a surprise. Like, “Check it out, this is what we did today.” and I’ll hear it at home and be all like, “Holy fuck dude! That’s awesome, now I wanna go learn it.” It’s exciting. 

mxdwn: That’s also how you keep inspiring each other as artists. That’s really nice to hear. Looking towards the future, are there any other genres or directions you all want to explore or incorporate into your future music? 

MP: Oh, keeping high energy all the way! I’ll just keep to what I know, I’ll try to learn things, or sometimes I go back and relearn Iron Maiden or a Randy Rhoads song, or we’ll learn a cover or something which inspires some of our writing of original material, by doing covers. That’s a good way to get back into it because you remember your roots, from a writing aspect. 

mxdwn: Yeah I was gonna say it can be hard to plan for the future when you don’t know what you’re feeling inspired by yet. 

JM: Yeah. Things inevitably come along the way that hit you in a certain way and influence you. I think a lot of the time the influences that find their way into music are not conscious necessarily. It’s just things that find their way into your vocabulary through osmosis {laughs}. 

MP: Yeah. 

mxdwn: I think you touched on it a little bit earlier, Coady, but you mentioned how you all have been fans of each other and your other bands for a while. How do you all think your different musical endeavors influence your work when you come together for High On Fire? 

CW: I’ve just found that, you were saying earlier how you get into one gear and can sometimes get stuck there, sometimes it’s hard to see outside of that bubble. For me, being able to go play in a different band, and every band I’ve ever played in, the physicality of it is totally different. Just the tempo of the songs, the style, I end up using different muscles for each of the different bands I play in. Sometimes it’s really nice to be able to just step outside of that bubble for a minute and hit a different gear. Then when you come back to it, it feels both new and familiar at the same time. You kind of have an outsider’s perspective of, “Well we’re not doing it like this, we’re doing it like this.”. It’s great for me cause cross pollination is always good, I think. Being able to both pull different ideas and disregard different things like, “I know this isn’t going to work, I know this isn’t going to fit here.”. It’s a new perspective, different ideas and just being able to step outside instead of having to always have it be the same thing all the time, if that makes any sense. 

mxdwn: It totally makes sense. I can definitely see how being able to diversify your talents and step aside into other roles can help, especially when it comes to getting stuck in a bubble of the same things. Cross pollination is a really good word for it. 

CW: I also found that getting older, there’s a real art to knowing that certain things don’t flourish when you strangle them to death. Sometimes the best things you do, you are doing it when you’re not really trying. If something’s not working, whatever your approach is or the idea is just not working, being able to put it down for just a second and focus on something else, to let it be, sometimes those problems take care of themselves. You set it aside, put it on the back burner, and when you come back to it you see it in a new way. Sometimes laser focusing on something and overcooking it, really trying to strangle the life out of it, isn’t the answer. You have an idea and you’re hammering away and it’s just not happening, just being able to set it down for a second, bounce to something else, and then some back to it, sometimes it works wonders. You come back to it with a fresh mind. You’re not so entrenched in it that you’re losing perspective. 

mxdwn: Totally. I’m definitely a victim of that as well {laughs}. 

CW: It’s true. You want to get there so bad, you want it so bad, especially when you can taste it and you can see the finish line. You’re almost there and the desire to push and push and push to get there, it’s hard to resist. Sometimes it’s just way easier to stop, walk away for a second and come back, and there it is. It just presents itself. 

MP: You gotta let it breathe and think about it for a while, then come back and it will all be figured out. 

CW: Yeah. 

MP: Sometimes you figure it out by not being anywhere near your instrument. Then you wanna go find your instrument because you thought of it. You’re like, “I hope I don’t forget this!” and end up humming it like a dummy into your phone {laughs}. 

JM: There’s one particular piece we have on the latest album that we’ve had around since 2010 or so. 

MP: Oh yeah!

JM: Yeah, the “Tough Guy” riff. We’ve had this thing around forever. Great riff, we always tried to find a home for it and tried to figure out how to incorporate that into a song but we would always run into dead ends. We’d always try to force it with different things and it just wasn’t happening. We kind of forgot about it for a couple of years actually until it finally saw the light of day on this album {laughs}.

MP: Yeah that was great. That was one of those ridiculous jokes I was talking about. 

JM: Yeah!

MP: That riff was a ridiculous joke {laughs}. We were talking about picking up cigarette butts and stirring the gumbo and doing that thing. Yeah, just to elaborate on that. It made me really happy that it made the album, and Jeff too. 

mxdwn: That’s pretty awesome that the song was able to find a home fourteen years later. I feel like it just goes to show what we were talking about earlier, that some things just need more time to develop, especially when it comes to art and music. But speaking of your greatest songs I have to ask, you all won a Grammy back in 2019 for your song “Electric Messiah”, a moment that so many musicians only dream of. How did it feel to win that Grammy, especially in a category that is so hard to break through? 

MP: Well for me, the approach I took, I mean I had that song around and was just jamming it like a D-Beat song and Jeff was jumping in and it was one of those things where we didn’t know where it was going to go yet. After Lemmy died I had this weird dream and in it I wrote a bunch of lyrics for it, so I knew how all of the singing was going to go on it. That made the song come together pretty quickly. We got together one practice and it just kinda fell from the sky. 

mxdwn: Wow! 

MP: Jeff had this opening riff and I had been fucking with the D-Beat thing so they just connected. I think once Lemmy died and I completed the lyrics it came together overnight. It was kind of a strange Lemmy’s ghost story, with respect to him. 

JM: The verse riff is another example of something happening when you’re just trying to make somebody laugh. That was me trying to play just a ridiculous riff. We called it the insect attack riff {laughs} just like, “What the hell is that?” and we were laughing about it. Then it’s something that becomes part of a song, it’s pretty funny. 

MP: “Insect workout with Lemmy”.

JM: That was the working title of “Electric Messiah”. 

MP: It was! 

{All laugh}

MP: I actually wanted to name it that really bad {laughs}. 

JM: There’s three riffs: The opening riff, Des’ workout riff, the insect attack riff and the Lemmy riff. {Laughs} So it became “Insect workout with Lemmy”. But yeah, it was very strange to win a Grammy for a song that was once titled that.

mxdwn: Wow, that’s great. Congratulations again on the Grammy, that’s a great award to be able to win especially for a song that came together trying to make each other laugh. I’m learning that’s the secret ingredient, to go into the studio trying to make your bandmates laugh. 

MP: It works sometimes, what can I say? 

mxdwn: When you all finished that song in one day did you have a feeling it was going to be career changing? Did you have any inclination to what was going to happen with that song? 

MP: To be honest with you that’s the last song on that album that I thought would get that kind of acclaim. There were a lot of other epic hits on that album that are a lot more serious. It’s kind of a head trip. 

JM: Yeah it was pretty wild. Honestly the whole Grammy thing just caught us completely off guard. Personally, I never saw us even being in the running for a Grammy at any point. So it was pretty wild. When we got the notification that we had been nominated it was, “What the hell? How’s this happening?” {laughs}. 

MP: Ironically I think when Motörhead got their nomination they were taken back like that too. They’re like, “What the fuck? Okay whatever.” {laughs} if I recall correctly. 

mxdwn: It has to be a pretty surreal moment, especially as metal musicians where a lot of musicians are definitely not going into the genre with the intention of winning a Grammy. They do it for their love of music and the genre itself. You know, I can’t help but notice that you all are from Oakland, the Bay Area, which has always been a pretty big musical hub but I can’t help but notice that it currently has an especially booming metal and hardcore scene. What was the scene like when you were first coming up and how do you think it compares to what it is today? 

JM: Do you want to take this one, Matt, since you were there first? I was kind of a late comer. 

MP: Sure. Part of it is a Ghetto and it’s very blue collar. You have to be careful about how you carry yourself in that town. There’s an overall tough guy thing to it. There’s a gang thing to it, and there’s a punk and metal thing to it. If you’re from Oakland, or even San Francisco in the day, there’s just this overwhelming sense that you’re going to work really hard to have an apartment. You’re going to dig ditches. So if you’re fortunate enough to have a cool band, you go and take it out on your instrument. A little bit of anger and violence on your instrument, but you get it out in a positive manner. I think a lot of the bands that came from the Bay Area were that and politically charged from seeing poverty. Rich and poor, right next to each other. I think a lot of places that are like that have a really good music scene because there’s a lot to sing about and a lot of experience. The place is pretty rough but it’s also fucking beautiful too, if you can make it through. 

mxdwn: Yeah exactly. You’re so right about being able to see such a wealth disparity being so visible in that area and being so close to San Francisco where a 600 square foot apartment is going for 3,000 a month. You’re right, I think that type of environment totally lends to artists having a lot of emotion and a lot to talk about through their art, people who just want to be able to make a living off of their work. Do you have any advice to up and coming bands from your area  who want to make it to the success that High On Fire has achieved?

MP: Stick to your guns, be yourself and don’t take no for an answer. And hey, if someone doesn’t hand you something, go and get it. 

mxdwn: That’s so important in the music industry, when you’re faced with so many rejections. You really just have to keep going and not accept those rejections as the end and really carve that space out for yourself. As one of the most influential metal bands from that area, what do you hope High On Fire’s legacy will be? Is there anything in particular you want the band to be remembered for? 

MP: Just respect from our peers. I would want them to learn from that sound. That sound came from Oakland and is a cross of D-Beat, Slayer, Thrash Metal and Doom. It’s got all those elements. There’s also the stuff taken from the Turkish roots, classical and blues. We try to incorporate everything and we kind of get away with everything, probably because we overthink it. But overthinking is good, you figure out how to do it. Hopefully bands could look up to us, at least respect us, and learn from what we’ve been through, being old guys and all. 

mxdwn: I think a lot of these younger bands do look up to you all already, especially with the amazing riffs you all have. I know I do and when looking for more complicated riffs to learn I turn to your music. I’m not quite there yet but maybe someday {laughs}. So I only have one more for you all today. You’re set to start your North American tour this fall with support from Weedeater, Exhumed and Negative Approach. Is there anything you all are most looking forward to? Can you give mxdwn and your fans any hints at to what to expect for these upcoming shows? 

CW: They’re gonna be good. I’ve toured with Weedeater before and I love Negative Approach. John Brannon, the scariest voice in rock music. The shows should be great, great dudes, really good bands. I think the vibe is going to be really fun and high energy. I am looking forward to it. So, if nothing else, I am going to have a good time and I’m excited about that. 

JM: Likewise. 

mxdwn: It was a pleasure speaking to you all today. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us, I know you guys have a super busy schedule right now. 

MP: Yeah we gotta leave tomorrow {laughs}. We’re all going to be packing and we have to run the set one more time today, but we’ll get it done.  

mxdwn: Well good luck with your rehearsals and I’m looking forward to catching one of your shows out on the East Coast!