Webster defines an automaton as a “moving mechanical device made in the imitation of a human being.” Noted conspiracy theorist and shoot-from-the-hip, metallic warlord Matt Pike is many things, but automaton is certainly not one of them. The titular protagonist of his own new record, Pike, fights back against the status quo with everything in his arsenal. Kaleidoscopic guitar workouts, pained vocals, and a thunderous bottom-heavy rhythm section brawl hand in hand with pulpy tales of the bizarre and unknown.
“Abusive” starts the record auspiciously enough with Pike in classic High on Fire mode. Featuring a take-no-prisoners, double-kick verse march offset by an infectious groove-heavy chorus, it effectively sets a high bar for everything that comes next.
The bludgeoning drums and fierce riffing of “Throat Cobra” follow in “Abusive’s” leaden footsteps. I’m not exactly sure what a “throat cobra” is, but it sounds awesome, and I need one spray-painted on the side of my van stat. While Pike spits venom on this leather-clad unhinged rager, it’s when the band slows the tempo mid-song that things get interesting. Pike wrestling catharsis out of a melodic guitar figure that vamps on a half-time variant of the chorus riff pays dividends and really ties the room together. The band returns to this motif end-song to great effect.
On the record’s single, the questionably titled “Alien Sl*t Mom,” things start to get a little stranger. The song’s sheer aggression is offset by a string of unusual instrumental and production choices. With phased late-60s drums and guitars, minimalist “Hendrix-ian” guitar noodling, and a restrained melodic psychedelic tambourine breakdown, the song is more than worthy of its hazy, drug-induced music video. The soundbite at the end of the song, from a Twilight Zone episode titled “No Time for the Past,” ties the song into the album’s loose concept. Pike clearly sympathizes with the episodes’ misanthropic lead character, “one Paul Driscoll, a creature of the twentieth century,” who disgusted by the “misery-laden slop of the race of men: his hatred, prejudices, passions, and violence” travels back in time to “seek out three moments of the past in a desperate attempt to alter the present.” Of course, we know from the canon of science fiction literature, that man rarely bends the time continuum without consequence, and the battle rages on against the soulless automaton.
The swamp boogie of “Trapped in a Mid Cave” gets the hips moving. Splitting the difference between High on Fire and something altogether bluesier, the song is a whirlwind of claustrophobic acid grooves and irresistible classic guitar melodies. A record-high point.
Born out of COVID-19 lockdown restlessness, Pike and principal collaborator Lord Dying’s Jon Reid (drums) worked on ‘Matt Pike Versus Automaton’ with High on Fire and Sleep alumnus Billy Anderson (production). Featuring an assortment of guests including Mastodon’s Brent Hynds and Pike’s wife and Reid’s bandmate in Lord Dying Alyssa Maucere-Pike, the unfussy production and synergetic instrumentation perfectly supports the record’s haphazard flights of fancy.
Elsewhere, “Latin America Geological Forma,” with its Cuban-inflected rhythms, takes a drum cue from Black Sabbath’s ‘’Supernaut”. “Land” dubiously casts Pike and his weather-beaten, off-kilter blues-wail as a cowboy over a drunken, dusty-stomp that somehow comes across as earnest. And the punky sludge of’ “Acid Test Zone’’ channels Acid Bath’s death sludge and ends with a nodding audio clip of a car wreck.
The excellent ‘Apollyon,’ a reference to the biblical angel of the bottomless pit from The Book of Revelation, finds the band treading somewhat more traditional and melodic waters. Pike’s vocal inflection, which effectively amalgamates both Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster, accentuates a stuttering riff and surf-rock-referencing lead-guitar figure. Progressively and effectually devolving into some apocalyptic Sleep-like riffing, the tune appropriately ends with some whacked-out, noisy EVH on acid guitar histrionics.
‘Matt Pike Versus Automaton’ is a vehicle for the High on Fire main man to indulge his weirdest inclinations. Looser, punkier, and more psychedelic than Pike’s day job, the record largely succeeds on its own self-indulgent terms.