High on Fire burns hot and bright at the TLA

Bands rarely improve with age. Many implode before they have the chance, of course, but many more keep trucking when they should have sold the tour bus on Craigslist.

It is especially a pity when once-wonderful bands (for example, Metallica and Gang of Four) create new music that is so bad it threatens to revoke their legacy and makes us wonder why we ever championed them in the first place.

And so it is always nice to find an exception.

High on Fire, which headlined Wednesday at the TLA, is one of those rare bands that get better as they get older. Over the last 17 years, the Oakland trio helmed by 47-year-old Matt Pike (also of stoner metal band Sleep) has mastered the heavy-metal art form and become one of the genre's most exciting bands. The musicians do not wallow in their own (or anyone else's) stale formulas, but continue to sound fresher and meaner and increasingly invincible.

With songs from the recently released album Luminiferous - High on Fire's terrific seventh full-lengther, a strong contender for this year's best metal album - the band conquered the crowd with gusto. The members ripped into the night with the new album's opening song, "The Black Plot," allowing the thundering rhythm section of bassist Jeff Matz and drummer Des Kensel to throw down the gauntlet as a shirtless, tattoo-shielded Pike snarled and swung his black guitar and sweaty, long black hair around.

The set list was heavy on new songs, including the nightmarishly welcoming "Carcosa" (a reference to Season One of HBO's True Detective), the menacingly groovy "The Falconist," and the frenetically discontent "Slave the Hive." Luminiferous also features some of the most explosive and stunning solos of Pike's career, so it was a thrill to watch him thrash up and down the fretboard and make his guitar scream in new ways.

They also played some old favorites, like the title- tracks from Death is This Communion and Snakes for the Divine. That provided an interesting overview of just how much High on Fire have grown musically. They are a tighter, stronger unit now, producing a significantly more punctilious sound.

One thing that remains a High on Fire constant is Pike's insanely fun and downright crazy lyrics. It is hard to tell what he is barking about without a lyric sheet in hand, but here are some of the topics he covered Wednesday: aliens and our government's conspiring to take over the world; environmental apocalypse; the soul-sucking evil of mobile phones; Jesus' time-traveling twin brother; and how Adam (yes, that Adam) had a reptilian wife named Lilith before he met Eve. Weird and wild stuff, man.

Pike might look more and more like Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister every day, but there is one big difference between the two: Pike's sobriety. After stints in rehab and all that it entails, he is off the booze now. In interviews, he has been saying that this newfound clarity has enhanced his creativity, his guitar playing, his synergy with his band, and the enjoyment he feels when he takes the stage. All that was obvious Wednesday. With Pike at the top of his game, High on Fire is mightier than ever.