High On Fire

Hey kids!

So I had a chance to speak with one of my idols, Matt Pike of High On Fire. Ever since I saw them years ago on a foggy afternoon at San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill I was smitten. Sure I liked Matt's other band Sleep but High On Fire had a certain depth and aggression I was looking for. In fact, it was High On Fire's sophomore album Surrounded By Thieves that got me interested to work for Relapse Records as a street team guy. I've been with them now for 3 years and am continuing my work here in Tucson.

Well High On Fire has an amazing new album out Death Is This Communion and it hulks and slays the listener like no other Metal band out there today. As the band gets older, the music gets faster...go figure. Matt Pike was one of the founders of the influential stoner rock outfit Sleep which had an album consisting of one song, Dopesmoker, that clocked in a little over an hour. Heavy, doom sluggish bong rawk. Amazing. Now Pike leads the way of a thundering battalion of wizened barbarians through ancient ruins to do battle with mythical creatures that threaten the ways of the weed priests and warriors to follow. A molten fuse of classic thrash, fuzzed out stoner metal, growling doom hack and drums that roll with the avalanche of war rather than keep traditional pace with the guitar and bass that makes your fingers bleed just listening to it.

The saviors of modern metal I have always said.

Matt called me recently one afternoon just as I was waking up. He said he was a bit out of it too from the touring and endless promotions. So...what you read is what you get.

Enjoy!





Metal Mark: Hey Matt! How are you doing?
Matt Pike: I'm doing alright man. How are you?

Good! Trying to wake up...havin' my coffee.
(Laughs) Right on.

Where are you calling from?
I'm in Philadelphia at the Relapse office.

Oh cool. Well I got a link to hear the new album and I cranked it up so high one of my computer speakers blew. How do you like them apples?
(Matt just giggles)

Yeah. Well, anyway...what were some of the influences for the new album?
Oh wow. Well, the title alone, Death Is This Communion comes from an H.P. Lovecraft story, from "Call Of Cthuhlu", which is way cliche but I don't really give a fuck.

I know. A lot of your stuff reminds me of old D&D material.
(Laughs) Yeah, there's always a duality to it. I mean, sure, there is a lot of D&D stuff in it but there's also a lot of personal stuff as well. You know, struggles and stuff that goes on in life but, you know... It's just, uh... Why can't I fucking think right now?

Well gee whiz man! You got a new album coming out, a huge tour ahead of you and on top of it you have to ring up dorky writers like myself first thing in the morning.
Oh man. But yeah...aside from the D&D aspect I'm just real old school with my subjects and lyrics.

So what was it like working with your producer [Jack Endio]?
Oh it was great. He actually contacted us to produce the album since he knew Jeff (Matz, new bassist) for a while and he really wanted to work with us. Like pretty badly. When we were going through the list of people we wanted to work with he came up as the one that wanted to do it the most and he was just amazing at mixing. So I think we found our guy. He was simply amazing and worked with us really well.

I heard and saw on YouTube that jack had placed mics all over the studio to get a huge range and spectrum of sound.
Oh yeah. He did all kinds of crazy shit like that. We spent a lot of time on guitar tone and he does drums really good even though we had limited time in the big room so we had to move to a smaller room at the studio. So we did a lot of scratch tracks in the big room and re-amped everything when we moved. Re-amping is like when you take a track and re routing that track through the amp so its like you're playing the song without actually being there. It's pretty interesting.
You did all the recording in Seattle. What's your take on that city?
Um, it's cool. But it gets way depressing after its been gray too long. But I had a good time, got everything done which was nice.

And how is Jeff Matz working out?
Oh he's great. A swell guy and an awesome musician. I'm really happy to be working with him. He's been giving a hundred and ten percent if not more and is just a really cool guy.

Yeah you guys are like the Spinal Tap of bass players. You and Metallica.
(Laughs) Well, Jeff is pretty stuck now man. Until we tour him to death. I mean that's what happened to Joe [Preston]. He was just all 'look man, I love playing in your band and blah blah blah but it's just getting too much. I mean, I can understand. If I wasn't half insane I wouldn't be touring this much either.

So you're always touring or in the studio with High On Fire and your other side bands like Kalas and Scum Angel.
I'm just nomadic man, it's in my blood.

Is there a central theme to the new album?
Well...yeah. There's songs about magic and black magic and ether and all sorts of stuff. The first track "Fury Whip" is just about being punished and having bad luck. There's just a lot going on. When you read along with the lyric sheet you might be able to pick up on some of what we're getting across.

You've said, lyrically, that The Bible is your biggest influence.
Oh just the way it's laid out. I mean, people are always saying 'oh are you some kind of Christian band'? Um, NO! I just find the book interesting is all. It's really numerical and organized and when I write my lyrics on paper they don't look like what they look like on the album, like organized and counted. Yeah I have some weird obsession with that and find it pretty interesting.

But still on the Conan The Barbarian tip.
(Laughs) Totally. Completely. I can't help it.

There's a song, "Headhunter", that is just one huge drum solo that sounds like ten drums at once. Dez [Kensel] is the best drummer out there right now.
No doubt. I think I left during his drum takes so I don't know if that was once take or not. Dez and I don't really fight or anything, even after all these years. He has everything to do with the songwriting process. Half of these songs wouldn't exist without him. I defiantly wouldn't have riffs with rhythm without drums so...he is crucial to the songwriting.

So tell me about the birth of a High On Fire riff.
I always have riffs and ideas and stuff and now I can go to Jeff who has been writing a lot of stuff on the album. Then we can take it to Dez and decide if it's going to be 3s or 4s or some weird time signature. Once we have the drums figured out we can work on trying different things, play it like this or like that. There's a lot of different ways you can play a riff. Or even change it so there is different timing.

And I find it funny that as time goes on you guys seem to be getting faster.
Yeah. That's true and I don't know why that is. It's like when you enjoy playing your music you just start playing it that way. It's not a big conscious decision or like it just happens that way I think it's just a natural progression.

So I heard you shot a video for your first single "Rumors of War".
Oh yeah, it's all done. Shot out in LA. It's just us live. That song is very political and I've been reading a lot of stuff about how the Illuminati are actually reptoids, this alien race that has been here since Atlantis and the leaders of society have been bred to have this reptoid blood in them. I just find that concept completely intriguing. There's a lot of that on this album too.

So where do you draw most of your influences from?
Mainly books. A few films but really anything I find intriguing I just go with it.

Tell me about the upcoming tour.
We hit Europe first then the United States. Then we'll be home for the holidays then hit Europe again, then the States, then Australia and probably Japan.

A lot of people probably don't know this but you made Rolling Stone's Top 100 Rock Guitarists list.
Oh my God. I was so stoked on that. I have no idea how it came about, they just put me in there. I was kinda shocked.

Well I always thought you guys were the savior of Metal since the genre has become so splintered as of late.
Oh I know. You're either on one side and call it "hardcore" or on the other side where it's all melodic. Then you try and take black metal and make it all marketable. I mean, when I make a record I try not to listen to music at all. To try and stay non-influenced. I just try and get involved with the writing and not get involved at all. I don't want anyone to influence me. But, you know, I grew up listening to AC/DC, Van Halen, Motorhead, Slayer, Black Sabbath and they all influenced me as a kid to play. Definitely Slayer was a big influence but I have millions and millions of influences. But they don't dictate what I am going to write. I never go "I wanna write a song like that". It's more like "oh, well, the riff goes like this and what can we do with it?"

Have you ever opened up for Slayer or Motorhead?
Oh yeah, we opened up for Motorhead. Slayer offered us a tour but my drummer wasn't in the best shape then. Dez had to have back surgery so we had to woefully decline but hopefully we'll get another shot at that. We're pretty good friends with Kerry King's roadie and I think that's how we got the shot before. That and the Mastodon guys probably pushed a little for us.

Ever been approached by the Ozzfest people to tour?
Oh yeah. We did the Sounds Of The Underground tour but that was a different beast altogether. But we declined Ozzfest because we wont shell out $75,000 to play in front of a bunch of kids that don't appreciate us. I'm not going to pay anyone to play that's just bullshit.

So I see you teamed up with [artist] Arik Roper to do the album cover which is just amazing. How did that image come about?
We just sent him a copy of our pre-production demo and some lyrics and he just went off. That's kind of how he works and he works really well with us. Like for some weird reason that seems to be our guy.

So any last words to the readers out there?
Huh? Oh yeah. See you out there. Prepare to be destroyed!


www.relapse.com

www.highonfire.net

Tucson, AZ is smelly.

Tucson, AZ is Smelly and Weird

By Mark Whittaker




Having grown up and lived on the California coast my whole life I became accustomed to the scents that paradisal location has to offer.

My hometown is Carmel, CA on the Monterey Peninsula. With thick pine trees, foggy beaches and wood burning stoves, that little haven smells like a fairy village of yesteryear.

Growing up in Los Angeles had it’s difficulty, what with smog and traffic and Hollywood, but because of it’s sparseness and beaches I never really considered that mega-opolis “smelly”. It was and is too plastic to be so.

College in Santa Barbara had hints of money and stiff skunky weed mixed with ocean breezes and yard beers down on State Street. Great aromas that go well together if I say so.

And for 12 years I lived and prospered in San Francisco, which has a fine spread of DJ lounges, Fisherman’s Wharf, tourism cash, fantastic drugs, dark beer, legendary heavy metal bands and oiled up muscular gay men. Surrounded on three sides by the Pacific, San Francisco was a bouillabaisse of amazing scents and sensory overload.

Then, one day, I fell in love. It came out of nowhere. I met the girl of my dreams but there was one hitch:

She lived in Tucson, AZ.

My part time job that last year in San Francisco was bartending an outside bar as part of a larger establishment down on the Wharf. One night a group of girls saddle up and engage in a night of absolute drunken revelry. Turns out they were all in town for a friend’s wedding shower and they all hailed from different locales. Most of which, though, lived in Arizona.

Going crazy from a long distance relationship I decided rather quickly to put the apartment up for rent, quit all jobs and gigs, sell what I didn’t need, pack up the biggest rental car I could muster and drive 13 hours to Tucson, AZ to be with the girl I was madly in love with.

It was dawn when I first hit the highway and dark when I hit Tucson. Once in the city limits, I rolled down the window to shout “Hello Tucson! There’s a new idiot in town!” But once the window was opened, that heavy blast of freeway air careening its way into my face and car and my mouth ready to shout, I was hit with something else unexpected.

A stench!

Once I got to the house that I have never seen with a girl I sort of knew and would now call my own and home, I had to ask.

“Say...what is that crazy smell?”

She didn’t understand at first. Living in a place for almost a decade you get used to all the olfactory notions it offers up. But the California kid here wasn’t used to this. I mean, really, I had been through Tucson three times in my life. Once as a kid and twice on my way to Austin, TX to gas up and grab a burrito. This was new and strange territory for me. And the smell was something I had to get used to.

The overall stink that wafts over Tucson is one of backed-up street gutter. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Right by the intersection of I-10 the smell gets so foul that rolling up windows and diving from the stink is the only intelligent action one can take. Combined with the usual 100+ degree temperatures, the smell overcomes the populace and we all live in a seminal fear and denial that something is afoul in Tucson.

That first week was a rumbling mixture of adjustment, bliss, decompression and joy that I had a garden to work in again. When the lady would go off to work I would be in the small courtyard digging up and planting, all the while with my nose perked up and investigating the hot muck broth of Tucson.

“What is that?”, I would often wonder. “Is that...cheese? Or something? Smells like...grandma’s old vinyl couch.”

Packed tight between Nogales, Mexico and Phoenix, AZ, Tucson is subjugated to air that is all together stale and fiery. No ocean breezes here, the occasional windstorm would fist through and send old newspapers and meth addicts dancing in the air like that bag from “American Beauty”.

Then one day, it hit me. Hard.

Tucson has a combination of smells that will rival any in Detroit or Singapore. Trust me on this one. When you come to visit just stick your nose deep into the Southern Arizona air and see, well smell, for yourself.

After a month of living in Tucson the smells began to take form. I was able to single out the odors with some aplomb, much like the educated palate of a wine snob or food critic you read in the local paper. Everyday I would be out and about exploring this new homebase of mine; walking and driving down the various nooks and crannies, delving into different neighborhoods, discovering strange shops and eateries, drinking in dark and dive-y bars and most of all uncovering the mystery of that distinct aroma that is Tucson, AZ!

Here’s what I came up with. Follow along on these 5 easy steps.

1) That “smell” I discovered upon entering the city? It comes from the sewage treatment plant by the highway. All of Tucson’s foul waste and excrement goes there to be dealt with and it resides right off the off-ramp towards downtown. That’s the odd account of this town. They don’t even try to mask the flavor and death hold that a sewage treatment plant will provide. It’s not fifty miles off somewhere in the arid desert, something that Arizona has plenty of by the way, it’s just off of the I-10 welcoming visitors from the north with a diverse cavalcade of rot that smacks your nose like an angry prize fighter.

There are good days and bad days with this sewage place. Some days they seem to have shut off the stink valve and go off for a coffee break. The air is once again filled with the honeysuckle beauty and dense smoke from the bar-b-que pits. Then, on most occasions, the plant is running full force, possibly to keep up with a heavy poop delivery and the city once again lingers under the looming hate of backed up potties.

2) The sewage plant is one thing. That’s an easy one. But like a fine pinot noir, you have to subtle out the various flavors that tickle the hairs in your nose.

Mesquite Trees line most of the streets and courtyards here. Mesquite Trees alone are a doom of sorts. They have long sharp thorns that stick out of gangly branches and catch many an eye and jugular of passers by. This is only the mask it wears to let everyone know that Mesquite Trees harbor a molasses-meets-moss scent that hints towards wet dirt a dog may use as his outhouse. And we have one right outside our garden. In the spring blooms of daffodils and jasmine, the stinging tree shags over the walkway and releases a pungent ambiance that does not go well with our outdoor grilling. Mesquite bar-b-ques are the way to go man...but that’s after they have been dried and packaged. In the raw wild, these trees let you know who’s boss by excreting a rotting syrup flavor to top off the sewage plant we already learned about.

3) Being so close to Mexico gives Tucsonians a flavor of that country like no other. The food here is amazing, especially the “Sonoran Hot Dog” vendors. A Sonoran Hot Dog is regular hot dog done South of the Border. It’s bacon wrapped and served with hot chiles, cheese, beans and mayonnaise. They’re good. Sloppy, but good. Yet the downfall of these stands are the fact that hey pump out a greasy smoke log into the air that covers the surrounding area in a warm blanket of bacon slop and farts. And Sonoran Hot Dog stands are everywhere here. The perfect treat for a lunchtime snack or severe hangover, Sonoran Hot Dogs not only taste good but will invite hungry jackals from miles away with the combing sick breath of overdone beans, crusty grills and the exploding gas of its patrons.

They are a sight and smell not to be missed.

4) Lastly, the cakey air of Tucson is wrought with one disaster I had yet to fully foresee. California is so strict with its smoking laws that it is almost criminal to light up anywhere within 100 yards of human contact. This is great for me because I don’t smoke, never even took a puff, due to the fact that cigarettes just absolutely appal me. But the thing is...I like to drink. So going to bars, especially in Nevada, I am usually met with a smelly cloud of smoke that sticks to my skin and clothes for weeks after.

My first full night in Tucson was a bar crawl and I almost died. Not from the overload of beer and Jager shots, but from the bars themselves and the smoking that goes on in them.

Only recently has Arizona passed the “non-smoking” law for public places but currently, the bars here are stinkholes from eons of toothless bikers, mullet haired yokels and douchebag college kids chain smoking as they chain drink Bud Light. In most metropolitan cities, a “dive bar” is a fun and curious place to find. No pretension, no top shelf anything and no boloney, dive bars are the way to go for those who just want to tie one on and have no intention of being seen or making connections. Unless, of course, you like motorcycle mamas with jacked up grills that tug job you in the front seat for a pack of Marlboros and a shot of Jack.

Tucson is nothing but dive bars. Per square acreage, throwing a dead cat will most likely result in hitting a bar filled with the downtrodden, all smoking and making me move the air in front of my face like a tight sphincter’d society woman dramatically swishing away in front of her nose with her hand when anyone that makes less than six figures walks by.

The bars here just stink. Period. When you walk in you’re suckerpunched by stale beer, heavy smoke and those who think deodorant is a mythological invention. And due to the large volume of dive bars, usually with the doors open because of the heat and high cost of air coolant, the mordant reek climbs and is soon a part of the already fragrant air.

Tucson on a whole is a fantastic city. The mix of U of A students, immigrants, wealthy land investors, hippie artists, frustrated rockers, vagrants, transients, elderly Jewish folk and guys like me, you are met with a whirlwind of cultures and ideas all put on the back burner because it’s usually too hot to move.

This clash of the mighty is under the scope of a smell that only the few can appreciate and even fewer can decipher. Now that I have lived here for a year the smell of Tucson is one to savor and study.

But sometimes...sometimes!...that sewage treatment plant gets backed up and I long for the soft wisps of the California coast. All that is but a memory now.

The smell of Tucson, AZ though, will always be burned in my brain..

And most important, my nose!

Basquiat

Once wrote:

"Buy some soup

Build a fort

Set that on fire"



I just think that's cool is all...

Introduction!

Hello and welcome to Furry Woodland Creatures, the funtime observational short story and blog area for Mark Whittaker.

This blog will hopefully spawn the magazine of the same name which focuses on all things cool. No really...think puppet shows in Ohio, interviews with Charo and Slayer, great cookie recipes, how to play the harp, kids art, cult movie reviews, cartoons, neat photos, etc etc etc.

But here, on this blog, Mark will share his nutty observations and stories with you on a weekly basis. So stay tuned for the fun and frolic that is Furry Woodland Creatures.

Honestly. It'll be good. Watch.

OK. Let's get on with it!

-Furry Woodland Creatures