Live Review: High On Fire, Lizzard Wizzard, Zodiac - Crowbar

It’s night two of High On Fire’s two-night stint at Crowbar and the venue is full once again by the time openers Zodiac serve up a gnarly set of Pentagram and Saint Vitus-worshipping proto-doom.

Then there’s Lizzard Wizzard, who are an obvious, and great, choice for tonight’s main support slot because of their out-and-out worship of Sleep. While they keep the tempos trudging along at the pace of a funeral dirge, the local outfit keep the energy high… Or at least something’s high while they’re ripping out their excellent set.

He might be missing a tooth or two, his manboobs are starting to sag with age, and the jury is definitely still out on the Chopper mo’ he’s sprouted, but tonight there’s not a dude in Crowbar that isn’t totally in love or completely envious of High On Fire frontman Matt Pike. He exudes a simian charisma that makes us smile like idiots; we want to high-five him, we want to eat dangerous amounts of Mexican food with him.

Tonight he seems more aloof in his interactions with the crowd than he has been on previous Australian tours, but that just adds to the appeal of the cult of Matt Pike. It makes him seem more badarse when he just launches into a cut like Madness Of An Architect. We don’t have any warning that the monolithic jams will start peeling away our faces, which adds an air of uncertainty to tonight’s proceedings.

That High On Fire, who haven’t released a new full-length in two years, can find little ways like this to keep us on our toes is testament to how good a band they are. Beyond the collective mancrush the entire room has on Pike, High On Fire are an astonishingly cohesive unit. The rhythm section of drummer Des Kensel and bassist Jeff Matz is powerfully in sync from the first notes of Fury Whip, yet the blasts of Kensel’s double kicks and the overdriven charge of Matz’s bass never detracts from what the band are here to show off, namely The Almighty Riff.

The jams Pike produces from his six-string are huge, and even if we’ve heard them before – there’s not much in the setlist that diverges too greatly from what we heard when the band last toured in 2012, and it’s a shame they don’t hit the Blessed Black Wings or Death Is This Communion title tracks – they sound as lethal as ever galloping out from the PA behind Pike’s ‘war cry’ bellow. It’s these riffs that make Frost Hammer and Baghdad sound like Motörhead on steroids, and it’s these riffs that make us all dude-swoon for our man Matt Pike.