Review by Sonny for High on Fire - De vermis mysteriis (2012)

I have only really had a passing relationship with Oakland's High On Fire to date. I don't know why particularly as I have enjoyed the couple of albums I have heard previously, Blessed Black Wings and Death Is This Communion. Both of those were from the mid-2000's and so I have jumped forward a few years to 2012's De vermis mysteriis. There is no great divergence from the earlier albums and it consists once more of HOF's sludgy take on stoner metal. Most of the tracks fall into one of two camps, either pretty fast-paced, almost thrashy, stoner metal with a hard edge or a more doomy, slower take where the sludginess is more to the fore. The production of the album was handled by Converge's Kurt Ballou and he has done a bang-up job as the sound is super thick whilst still maintaining a superb clarity where every nuance of the instrumentation can be heard clearly, the drums and bass are beefy-sounding and certainly provide a solid foundation for the guitar work, whether it be the fast, intense riffing of tracks like Bloody Knuckles and the title track, or the more considered and heavier-sounding, slower riffs of Madness of an Architect or Romulus and Remus. It is unsurprisingly this slower material that I prefer, it sounding more intense and crushing than the thrashier stuff.

Overall this is a pretty solid album that does have a superb production job and while the tracks all possess the requisite heaviness and there are no duds, I'm not convinced that any of them are super-standout either.