High On Fire

High On Fire are one of those bands that make great albums that never fully capture the apocalyptic, cacophonous beauty of the live experience. Correcting that drastic oversight, Live From The Relapse Contamination Festival is a long-overdue release capturing the band in 2003. While that means most of the songs are culled from The Art Of Self Defence and Surrounded By Thieves — then unreleased effort Blessed Black Wings is only represented via track "To Cross The Bridge" and latest album Death Is This Communion wasn't even a gleam in singer/guitarist Matt Pike's eye — what we are witness to is a young, vitriolic and energised band that explode with the ferocity and dissonance of a nail bomb in a brick shithouse. That's about as close as one can get without stepping into the seedy clubs this power trio invade. Thick, drastically overdriven and borderline sloppy, Live From The Relapse Contamination Festival is exactly what one expects — nay, needs —from an act such as High On Fire: an expedient dose of dangerous, dirty debauchery capped off by a cover of Venom's "Witching Hour."