Simple fact: You should see High on Fire live. Since guitarist, vocalist, and leader Matt Pike got sober, the Oakland trio's sounded especially alive and committed to the spirit of metal. People often use descriptors like “crushing mountains” and “moving planets” to describe High on Fire, and while they don't do that literally-- metal might be dangerous again if they had such powers-- their lust for volume will take care of any internal struggles. You come in to a High on Fire show complaining about your dead-end job, you come out thinking you can die peacefully.
Despite this, Spitting Fire Live Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, recorded at New York City's Bowery Ballroom and Brooklyn's Music Hall of Williamsburg during their most recent US tour, feels inessential like most live records released before or since KISS' Alive!. Concert albums never sound like the concerts they're supposed to capture, and with a band whose presence can stifle trite conversation like High on Fire's, it's a disservice. There are a number of technical details one could get into, but the point is simple enough: you're not there. You're not seeing Pike pluck strings like his life depended on it. His facial expressions when he's soloing-- missing out on that, too. You're not really getting the most low end you can from Jeff Matz. Des Kensel's bass drum isn't hitting your heart in the ways that it should. And you're not smelling the weed Pike can't smoke, or the beer he can't drink. It's just not the goddamn same.
Nonetheless, the discs pull from material from across their career, which highlights the transition from Pike, “The Guy Who Used To Be In Sleep” to Pike, “For Whose Riffs We Tremble.” His association with Sleep garnered High on Fire the “stoner metal” tag early on, despite Pike showing more ambition than his dopethroned brethren. High on Fire is a Metal band as Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden are Metal bands-- nothing before Metal, nothing after. This tour was not just in support of their most recent studio album, 2012's De Vermis Mysteriis, but also the Southern Lord reissue of their debut The Art of Self Defense. High on Fire included “Last”, “10,000 Years”, and fan favorite “Blood From Zion” from Defense on the setlist, and their smoldering fires don't burn as bright or as hot as the infernos of their later material. “Zion” holds up the best, but it's no “Snakes for the Divine” or “Fury Whip.” Even if you only listen to both editions of Spitting Fire once-- and it's likely you will-- seeing how much High on Fire improved from album to album is of some merit.
The double live set might satisfy the curiosity of some who wonder what songs from the 2010 Greg Fidelman-produced Snakes For the Divine sound like “dirtied up.” While it's far from a Boston-slick Devin Townsend album, Fidelman's production on Divine is cleaner than the albums produced by Steve Albini (Blessed Black Wings, High on Fire's 2005 breakthrough), Jack Endino (Death is this Communion), and Kurt Ballou (Vermis). While Divine received plenty of praise, there was also a contingent who thought it represented a sterilization of Pike's inner animal. (If those folks have trouble with Pike standing on top of K2 busting out the intro to Divine's title track, though, their imagination needs some greasing.)
But, all said, it's hard figuring out why Spitting Fire Live is being released in the first place. It's basically just another product clogging up record store shelves, and would work better as a (preferably free) download. Actually going out to a High on Fire will imbue memories of headbanging to the rhythm of Pike's beer gut. The end result of Spitting Fire Live? Probably nothing more than ripped CD files languishing in a terabyte external drive.
