Best known for his work with Sleep and High on Fire, Pike vs The Automaton is the debut solo release from the Michigan born guitarist and vocalist. Written by Pike with drummer Jon Reid, the album features several guest contributors. It’s an album full of the rage and fury that High on Fire fans have come to expect, with high paced aggressive almost punk elements. Pike describes it as “an off-the-wall psychedelic rock record.”
Created when Pike was unable to jam or tour with High on Fire, the background for Pike vs The Automaton not only included the worldwide pandemic but the political unrest in the US alongside rampaging west coast wildfires, so intense that the skies were permanently red orange. Encouraged to put his name in the title, it’s an image of Pike against the world. For those familiar with the film Jason and the Argonauts”, you’ll the battle against Talos, a soulless machine; The Automaton being the guardian of the gods in Greek mythology.
The album opens with the battering all-out piledriver “Abusive”. A thunderous track that wallops along, it sets the tone for what is to come. Ragingly hard guitars and pulsing rhythms, underneath Pike’s own unique and distinctive gravel-soaked vocals, it’s a track very much in the style that Pike has made his own with High on Fire. This pace remains on several of the tracks on the album, with some ferocious soloing thrown out on the bullet train speed of “Throat Cobra”. Even after two songs, you can feel the tension that Pike had stored up beginning to flow. One can only imagine those early sessions with Reid in Pike’s garage.
The first track the duo wrote arrives in the shape of the eight-minute “Trapped in a Midcave”, which opens with a deliciously sludgy riff. It’s a slower, with a more stoner doom feel, with Pike commenting that it’s got a “God of Thunder” element, which makes perfect sense once you’ve listened to it. It’s also a song that shows Pike’s prowess on the guitar, with a meandering solo that he drew deep from the works of German axeman Michael Schenker.
It’s not all crushing obliteration. “Land” is a laid-back blues track which Pike jammed out with his wife before Brent Hinds of Mastodon added a searingly ripping solo in typical style. One to sit back and enjoy with a cold one in hand despite the subject matter of depression and the hardship of life. It’s a completely different style to the rest of the album but fits perfectly. As well as Hinds, the album also features Jeff Matz, Chat Hartgrave, Steve Meets and Joshua Greene.
Elsewhere, there’s the driving propulsion of “Alien Slut Mum” which is explosively sludgy and ferociously aggressive, the black metal/punk fusion of Acid Test Zone” as well as two huge tracks which take up a third of the album. The first of these is Apollyon, which sees Pike and Reid embark on a huge psychedelic jam which rolls along before slowing to allow a thick riff to take centre stage. A brief pause is followed by an increase of tempo, swathes of sludgy riffage present before it descends into a cacophony of aural abuse. The second being album closer “Leaving the Wars of Woe”. Another pummelling track, this contains some massive Sabbath style riffing and is a behemoth of a song to conclude an album that contains some of the heaviest music you’ll hear this year.
Pike vs The Automaton is out on February 18th
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