A guitar is great, but it doesn't cut like a knife
A guitar is great, but it doesn’t cut like a knife
0 Comments | Winnipeg Free Press, Jul 8, 2010 | by Williams, Rob
To Matt Pike, his guitar is simply a tool.
A knife, on the other hand, is an investment.
To some, the frontman of Oakland power trio High on Fire is considered a guitar god, with a never-ending supply of colossal riffs he unleashes on his customized nine-string axe, but as much as he values his guitars for helping him achieve his musical goals, he is unsentimental about them.
“I collect knives. I collect guitars in a way because I have to, but I think there are lots of guitars that are worth more money than they should be worth. A knife is made out of stainless steel. It’s the kind of thing that won’t break down. Something made out of wood isn’t going to last forever; it’s going to warp and crack,” he said over the phone from an Oakland bar where he was drinking a whisky and coke and showing off his latest purchase to a friend — a transplant surgeon.
“It’s so bad-ass,” he says. “It’s a French knife and has little bumblebees on it. It was $150 bucks but it was worth it.”
The fact Pike collects knives sounds like something he should do, along with slaying dragons, fighting sea creatures and throwing lightning bolts at mountains. Over the past 12 years, High on Fire has released five albums that draw from the new wave of British heavy metal, sludge, doom, stoner rock and thrash. Its latest, Snakes for the Divine, draws on stories from H.P. Lovecraft and the conspiracy theories of British author David Icke, who believes the world is run by a network of secret societies and that humans were created from a reptilian race who rule the world.
“I think they make the best metal songs of all time,” Pike says of Icke’s work. “I believe a lot of it, but there’s a kind of literary conjecture too.
“Lovecraft is the best songwriter of all time. His short horror stories are the best.”
The inspiration behind Pike’s subject matter may be the subject of much debate, but there’s no denying it makes for powerful, inventive music that has been gathering more fans with each new release, including getting positive reviews in mainstream publications such as the New York Times and Mojo.
The band’s previous two albums, Blessed Black Wings (2005) and Death Is This Communion (2007), both made the Winnipeg Free Press’s albums of the year list.
“It doesn’t surprise me. It’s long earned. They should have been doing that years ago,” the 37-year-old says of the attention.
Pike got his start playing with stoner metal outfit Sleep in the 1990s. The group disbanded following their label’s rejection of their third album Dopesmoker, a single song that clocked in at more than an hour
stainless steel bar
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