Shortly before the commencement of the Christmas festivities we were able to speak to High on Fire’s own Jeff Matz. Unleashing yet another solid stellar effort in the form of Luminiferous the band show no signs of weakening. Speaking to the bassist we asked the man, what some of his biggest influences included, what it was like to return to God City Studios to record the new album and much more! Listen to the full interview below this excerpt for the unedited chat.
Can you tell us about the album’s artwork at all?
Mhmm! It’s our buddy Jordan Barlow did the artwork for the album, basically Matt just gave him a loose concept of what he was thinking about and the lyrics of some of the songs. He (Matt Pike) had just been to Peru a year or two prior to us writing and recording the record and he was pretty blow away by some of the things that he saw down there. He’s pretty into Machu Pichu, he’s definitely checked out a lot of pretty crazy ancient architecture that was, to him seemed pretty unexplainable other than there is somebody with some serious technology at work… Moving these gigantic stones around, it kind of ties in with that, ancient cultures, were there aliens involved?
I was about to say! Is that with the red eyes and everything?
Yeah exactly,
Was it painted?
It was painted! That was actually a painting that was photographed he did it as oil on canvas, yeah Jordan is amazing!
It must have taken quite a long time to do?
Yeah, I think it took quite a while, he was working on it for a bit. I think it turned out really good.
I think it really fits the sort of vibe of the album as well, do you find that artwork is quite important to an album?
Definitely! Definitely. You know at least for me, I like it all to tie in as one big experience. When you sit down listen to an album, you’ve got an album cover in your hand, you’re looking at the artwork, it takes you on a journey. You know what I mean? I’m a fan of sitting down and listening to an entire record. Sitting there and checking out the art reading the lyrics, the whole experience. It’s different today, with the digital media, it’s so easy to just fast forward with stuff listen to stuff in the car or what have you.
You don’t kind of get the build up, especially with the longer songs. If you’re skipping through...
Exactly and you know when you listen to an entire album you listen to it in context, you listen to it how it’s intended to be heard.
Have any of your albums been concept albums at all?
Yeah! I guess you could call the last one, De Vermis Myssteriis a sort of a concept album. I would say it’s fairly loose by how the songs tie together but it’s a pretty wild concept haha!
Join the conversation once again at 12:00 minutes below on our Soundcloud to listen to the podcast with the full unedited interview with Jeff Matz. Finding out some of the bassist’s musical influences along with the band’s plans for 2016 and what his opinion might be when the big bands have finally had their day, who will be the bearers of new music!
