High On Fire

High on Fire was formed in 1998, when Matt Pike disbanded the well-respected stoner Sleep and decided to seek new thrills. Not long after, in 1999 the band released their first, self-titled EP that was quickly followed by a full-blooded debut album “The Art of Self Defense”.

The sludge metal heaviness and roughness in the High on Fire’s sound did not escape the attention of Relapse Records, one of the most important metal labels, who signed them in 2001 and propelled the band in new directions. The Oakland trio reached new levels of popularity and arrived at the very top with the 2007 “Death is the Communion”, overshadowing even the cult Sleep and reaching number 142 on the Billboard 200 chart. The material that followed, released under E1 Music, only fortified the band’s prestige and their signature mixture of sludge and stoner doom with a dash of thrash metal has been a constant source of inspiration for newcomers.

The culminative success of High on Fire came in 2019 when they won a Grammy for “Best Metal Performance” – a category in which Matt Pike and his bandmates faced off such big names as Trivium or Between the Buried and Me. The most recent release of the band is the EP “Bat Salad” with an original title track and Celtic Frost and Bad Brains cover songs.