That’s basically what Heavy Metal Parking Lot is. It’s essentially a movie — if you want to call a plotless 16 minutes and 41 seconds a movie — of drunk teenagers making asses of themselves in a parking lot.

But Heavy Metal Parking Lot has the distinct privilege of being a featured exhibit at the University of Maryland for the next year. Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The 30-Year Journey of a Cult Film Sensation aims to tell the story of how a low-profile 1986 video wound up all over the country — at a time when it wasn’t so easy.

Here’s the short version: Jeff Krulik was working for public-access television in Maryland and had access to recording equipment. His friend John Heyn had the idea to go to the parking lot outside a Judas Priest concert and just see what they could come up with. The two aspiring documentary filmmakers recorded about 65 minutes of footage on the afternoon of May 31, 1986, outside the Capital Centre in Landover.

(James Doubek/WAMU)

Heyn edited it down to the most entertaining encounters — almost all of which involve young people in various degrees of intoxication. And because Heyn had a job at a video dubhouse, they “gave out copies out like water,” Krulik says.

In the early ’90s, some of those copies make their way through friends out to the West Coast, and to places like Mondo Video A-Go-Go, a cult video store in Los Angeles. Dubs got into the hands of people like director Sofia Coppola, who wanted to use it in a TV show, and onto tour buses of bands like Nirvana.

It was protoviral video.

“The story we wanted to tell was kind of twofold,” says Laura Schnitker, the acting curator of the University of Maryland’s Mass Media & Culture collection, who is co-curating the exhibit with Krulik. “First we wanted to tell how the film was created, like what equipment they used and what their initial thinking was. And then we want to talk about how the film went viral at a time when there was no internet and no digital film.”

The exploration of this dissemination is one of the reasons the university agreed to host the exhibit.

Additionally, Schnitker says she was able to “sell” her colleagues on the exhibit because it’s very Maryland-focused. Krulik is a University of Maryland grad (’83) and a lifelong state resident. Schnitker notes the Maryland accents of the people in the movie and its documentation of a “really identifiable subgenre” — working-class white Marylanders, with distinct hair and clothes.

Co-curator Laura Schnitker notes the Maryland accents of the people in the movie and its documentation of a “really identifiable subgenre” — working-class white Marylanders, with distinct hair and clothes.

Krulik donated his archive of source material and video to the university’s Mass Media & Culture collection last year. He pitched the idea of the exhibit in anticipation of the movie’s 30th anniversary, and also as another way to celebrate the donation.

The exhibit is nestled in a small corridor between the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s main building and the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. The floor is gray with yellow stripes, in tribute to the parking lot.

You can see the whole thing in about the time it takes to watch the movie. VHS tapes of Judas Priest and Dokken (the other band that played that night) are on display. One wall contains screenshots of the movie’s “stars” and their notable quotes, including such words of wisdom as:

“Priest is bad, man. Priest is Number One in heavy metal, man.”

“Joints across America.”

“I’d jump his bones!”

“Who are you here to see tonight?” “Your mother!”

Krulik especially wanted to “pay homage” to the Cap Centre, Schnitker says, noting its importance to people who grew up in Maryland in the ’80s and ’90s. The exhibit features a brief history of the venue, along with asphalt taken shortly before its demolition in 2002.

Visitors can see a handwritten postcard from John Waters, sent to John Heyn in 1987. “Your film was great — what monsters!” Waters writes. In what must be truly a feat of accomplishment for Heyn and Krulik, the director of Pink Flamingos writes that Heavy Metal Parking Lot “gave me the creeps.”

In what must be truly a feat of accomplishment for Heyn and Krulik, director John Waters writes that Heavy Metal Parking Lot “gave me the creeps.”

That postcard is one of Schnitker’s favorite items, along with a ticket stub from the concert. It harks back to the days when people saved Ticketmaster stubs as mementos. Scannable codes on smartphone screens these days just don’t have the same charm.

There’s also a wall filled with pictures of magazines from the ’90s and 2000s that mentioned the movie. Request magazine in August 1999 referred to “a Wild Kingdom-style study of haystack-haired headbangers like ‘Zebraman,’ drug-legalization champion Gram, and other Jack Daniels-swilling Beavises and Butt-heads in their natural environment.”

Even though it’s a Maryland story, something like Heavy Metal Parking Lot probably could have happened at any Judas Priest concert on that tour.

What makes it unique is that events weren’t “documented to death like things are today,” Krulik says. “It was a real novelty to be in that kind of environment, that place with professional video equipment.”

The exhibit will be up through May 2017, after which it will be put back with the rest of Krulik’s collection in the university’s Hornbake Library. Schnitker and others are creating a digital version to put online.

On a summer day with the semester over, not many students passed by the day I saw the exhibit. But Krulik is hopeful students will take a second to be inspired when they do walk through. Perhaps from some words on the wall: “Heavy metal rules!”

(James Doubek/WAMU)

“Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The 30-Year Journey of a Cult Film Sensation” is on view at the Gallery at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library through May 2017.

“I do want to point out, that Finland has perhaps the most heavy metal bands in the world, per capita,” he said, “and also ranks high on good governance. I don’t know if there’s any correlation there.”

Albert Mudrian is the editor-in-chief of the heavy metal-loving Decibel Magazine. He says that many metalheads took note of President Obama’s comment.

“The metal underground got pretty excited about the President of the United States referencing the Finnish metal scene,” he says.

He says Finland has one of the most vibrant metal scenes in the world. It’s estimated the country has 54 metal bands for every 100,000 Finns. But why Finland?

“I’m sure the 200 days of a bone-crushing winter have something to do with it,” he says. “And perpetual darkness.”

He might be on to something. Finland does share that climate with its neighboring Scandinavian countries, and metal is a flourishing genre all over the region. But while Sweden is known for its death metal bands, and Norway is famous for black metal, Mudrian says the Finns are less homogeneous.

“There’s so many different types of bands, but the one thing, to me, that kind of unites them is that they all have kind of a difficult sound,” he says. “Finland is making the weirdest heavy metal imaginable.”

Whether there’s a connection between bizarre heavy metal and good governance, however, is still anybody’s guess.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The fuzz-rock trio’s third LP — released in the fall and generally well-received by fans and critics — sounds like it could have come out in 1974, with crushing guitar riffs, groovy drums and howling vocals.

That said, bass player and vocalist Clayton Burgess is quick to point out that the band from Herndon, Virginia, isn’t trying to recreate the past.

“It’s not about being retro, it’s not about ripping off Sabbath riffs or replicating anything that happened,” Burgess says. “We have the gift of retrospection — so much to pull from and go forward with — and I don’t want to just rehash the past.”

This approach has led to three records unlike anything else coming from the D.C. area: classic doom-metal noise infused with the energy of ’80s punk and wrapped in the macabre aesthetic of horror flicks.

Burgess notes that the horror influence is much more apparent on early Satan’s Satyrs records, particularly 2012’s Wild Beyond Belief. “In the beginning of the band,” he says, “I think it was kind of the totality of the lyrical content — that was the subject matter — whereas now I just feel like it kind of colors the lyrics, acting as my secret ingredient.”

On “Alucard,” the sixth track on Wild Beyond Belief, Burgess bellows, “Archetype of evil dispatched on city streets / Creep in the cathedral, in a casket sleep / Does the fire in my eyes betray my groovy guise? / Stare a little deeper, you’re hypnotized,” channeling visions and revisions of Bram Stoker’s iconic blood sucker.

But Satan’s Satyrs is not a horror-metal band. “We’re not The Misfits,” Burgess says. “It just comes out because it’s kind of my personality. I tried to write a love song and it ended up being about Dracula.” That doesn’t mean that things are all doom and gloom, either, and Burgess says he wants his lyrics to serve as an escape for his listeners.

“I like a little bit of whimsy and fantasy in my music,” he says. “I don’t want it to be just like a [Ronnie James] Dio record which is purely fantasy, but I want to reflect things that I’ve experienced in my lyrics and then let them take on a new life and paint them with this sort of fantastical palette.”

“I tried to write a love song and it ended up being about Dracula.” — Clayton Burgess of Satan’s Satyrs

In a lot of ways, that approach is the defining trait of Satan’s Satyrs — the music is simply fun to listen to. It’s larger than life, aggressive and a little bit silly, which is refreshing in an era when so many metal acts take themselves too seriously.

“We’re at a stage here where music is so compartmentalized it’s ridiculous,” Burgess says, “and it’s not reaching out to people, it’s reaching out to niches. I want my music to be honest, I want it to have nothing to lose, and hell yeah, I want it to be accessible.”

In a lot of ways, then, Satan’s Satyrs’ sound is a direct reflection of the band’s rise from a solo project to being invited to play the 2013 Roadburn Festival by British doom-metal legends Electric Wizard — with whom Burgess currently plays bass and Satan’s Satyrs has toured — all thanks to an unsolicited demo he sent them in 2010.

“It’s just really cool to know that doing something like that — mailing a demo tape unsolicited has changed my life,” Burgess says. “So life can be a bit mysterious sometimes.”

Unlike the fictitious heavy-metal band from the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, Shumaun frontman Farhad Hossain hasn’t lost skins players to bizarre gardening accidents or spontaneous combustion. But as his progressive-rock band was working on its full-length debut, Shumaun, he cycled through three different drummers.

That kind of instability could spell the end for many bands. But Shumaun powered through it — even managing to record a remarkably fluid album in the process (stream it below). Chalk that up to Hossain’s songwriting, sharpened by his years in the D.C. region’s progressive-rock scene.

Hossain has been involved in local music for more than a decade, playing in the bands Iris Divine and Encompass and serving as a session artist for other groups. When Iris Divine emerged in 2008, it quickly established itself as one of the area’s best progressive metal bands. In those days, Hossain split vocal, guitar and songwriting duties with Navid Rashid. But Hossain says it wasn’t always an ideal configuration.

“When you are in a situation like that, you have to make compromises,” says Hossain.

So when Hossain left Iris Divine in early 2012 — they remain friends and occasional collaborators — he turned his attention toward the wholly self-directed project that would become Shumaun. But soon he found that even going solo didn’t free him from certain hurdles, like picking a creative starting point.

“We started off as an ‘indie-rockish’ kind of band,” the musician says. “I had written an album’s worth of material that I scrapped before shifting to the more hard-rock direction that is now Shumaun.”

Then there was the drummer saga.

Tanvir Tomal, who had also played in Iris Divine, was Shumaun’s first drummer. Then his job took him out of the area and he left the group. So Hossain brought in Travis Orbin (formerly of Periphery, now in Darkest Hour) and Mark Zonder (Fates Warning) to help in the studio while looking for a full-time member. He eventually found one in Waqar Khan. But Khan didn’t last long, either; he recorded three songs with Shumaun before leaving the band due to professional obligations, Hossain says. Then as fate would have it, Tomal returned: He’d found a new job in the area, so he moved back and rejoined Shumaun.

This all means that Shumaun’s first album — released Nov. 13 — features three different drummers, none of which are the original and current drummer. But never mind that. The key thing is that where so many prog bands flounder, Shumaun flourishes.

The songs on Shumaun’s debut don’t meander with endless jam-bandesque solos that show off each band member’s mastery of their instrument — something that can grow tiresome to any but the most devoted prog fans. Instead, the record’s compositions are structured much more like pop songs; relatively short and exciting with catchy choruses.

The album has its moments of darkness, too. But lyrically, Hossain aims for uplifting, maintaining an optimistic outlook. The record’s theme, Hossain says, is “unity and the battle to achieve it across all spectrums of human life.” A fitting idea, considering his struggles to achieve unity in his own band.

Hossain never expected Shumaun to become his full-time group. It “started as a side project,” he says, and he “had no intention of leaving [Iris Divine] to pursue it.” But he found himself drawn to the self-directed work. “It’s a very liberating way to write,” the musician says.

Though Hossain may still return to working collaboratively one day. He acknowledges that sometimes he misses sharing the creative process with others. It could even work out again with the members of Iris Divine, who are still playing together.

“I am sure we will find a way to collaborate in some way in the future,” Hossain says. “Possibly something not metal or hard rock at all.”

Shumaun plays the NoVa Metal Family Reunion tonight at VFW Post 9274 in Falls Church, Virginia.

“What happened?”

“He lived happily ever after.”

Cue the strings, perhaps, but also the dread of responsibility; of expectation and whatever else comes with suddenly getting everything you wanted. After a story that goes from poverty and desperation to 2013’s legit metal crossover Sunbather, this is where the members of Deafheaven find themselves on their third album. The band could have just as easily turned in more uplifting, shoegaze-y black metal as Sunbather II and called it a day. But New Bermuda is a resounding rebuttal to complacency, entrenched in darker and decidedly classic metal moves, with a seeking spirit that rages.

Deafheaven wastes no time establishing the record’s sound and themes, as “Brought To The Water” thrashes with frantic urgency and vocalist George Clarke roars, “Where has my passion gone?” For three minutes, it’s the most straightforwardly black-metal track of the band’s career, as guitarist Kerry McCoy channels Billy Corgan‘s ugly string bends over the gauzy midpoint. But Deafheaven can’t help but pretty up a dirty thing, as it all lifts to a dreamy pop melody in a major key, complete with piano coda. “Luna” follows suit with a nasty riff jammed between blast beats, and a somewhat awkward band dropout that follows a guitar solo to each section, but it’s redeemed by shimmering guitar work and Daniel Tracy’s choice, melodic drumming.

But it’s the back half of New Bermuda where the band steps out of its aggressive-to-pretty comfort zone and really throws itself against the wall. The mid-tempo centerpiece “Baby Blue” is a hypnotic Red House Painters sad jam that turns into a slo-mo Metallica ballad, complete with wah-wah solo. Clarke’s closing line even evokes James Hetfield at his most desperate: “God had sent my calamity into a deep space from which not even in dreams could I ever imagine my escape.” If that mix of styles isn’t strange enough, doomy South Of Heaven-era Slayer somehow sets “Come Back” up for a Wilco-inspired slide guitar and a languid exit that takes a page out of Starflyer 59’s lounge-gaze phase.

Still, “Gifts For The Earth” is where Deafheaven really raises the stakes. For two minutes, guitarists Kerry McCoy and Shiv Mehra pulse clean-toned power chords with the rhythmic urgency of mewithoutYou‘s “January 1979.” But where that song drives the melody in start-stop sing-song, “Gifts” breaks down in a samurai-slicing riff worthy of its dramatic build as Clarke hisses, “I imagine the end” in a reptilian sneer. McCoy has said that the melodic climax pays homage to Oasis, but it’s more “Hey Jude” than “Champagne Supernova.” (Go ahead, insert your own na-na-nas where necessary, and piss off the Gallagher brothers once more with a Beatles comparison.) It’s Deafheaven at its most electric and exploratory — a place of discovery for a band that isn’t afraid to expose its roots and find genuine expressions within them.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Windhand has been trawling the murky underworld of the doom scene for years, always bringing supple melodicism to its mix of mammoth riffs and morbid atmosphere. But with a solo album under her belt, Cottrell sounds more forceful than ever. The album was produced by Jack Endino, famous for his recording of grunge milestones such as Nirvana‘s Bleach and Soundgarden‘s Screaming Life, and there’s a hint of vintage sludge to Grief’s Infernal Flower‘s throttling low-end and raw, sinuous menace. As steeped in the heavy sounds of yesteryear as the album is, though, it doesn’t scan as a throwback; instead, it transcends era and genre, thanks to the group’s ear for deceptively infectious songwriting — not to mention Cottrell’s hypnotic voice.

Alongside the soaring psychedelia of “Forest Clouds” and the savage tunefulness of “Tannsgrisnir” — both of which test the limit of how much melancholy can be wrung out of industrial-strength distortion — Grief’s Infernal Flower goes long with a pair of songs that each top out at more than 14 minutes: “Hesperus” and “Kingfisher.” Taken together, the two tracks are practically an album unto themselves: The former crawls along like a prehistoric creature, while the latter propels itself through some far reach of the cosmos. “Crypt Key” is the album’s reality check, as a moody acoustic intro drifts into a gargantuan hook, topped off by Cottrell’s ethereal yet gritty delivery.

The album isn’t all about volume. Two folky, unplugged tracks, “Sparrow” and “Aition,” showcase the group’s increasingly potent sense of dynamics — and its knack for making even the quietest songs feel like earth-movers. “When I sleep, I dream of death,” Cottrell sings in “Sparrow,” her voice somehow sleepy and aggressive at the same time. In fact, either of these acoustic songs would have fit beautifully on her solo album, though Grief’s Infernal Flower doesn’t signal any kind of significant pivot in Windhand’s heavy methodology. But it does cement the band as one of doom’s leading absences of light, and it makes a great soundtrack for the death and rebirth of your choice.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

One of those places is San Francisco, which the museum’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation pinpoints as a kind of fertile crescent — and not just for BDSM, techies and multinational banks. It says thrash metal, the misbehaving child of metal and punk rock, flourished in the Golden Gate City, too.

A short film co-produced by the Smithsonian, Slayer: The Origins of Thrash in San Francisco, CA, looks at the role that San Fran’s music scene played in the growth of the pioneering thrash band formed in 1981 in Los Angeles.

According to the film, L.A. didn’t embrace thrash metal early on. Hair metal ran the scene. Extreme bands like Slayer couldn’t get gigs in town.

Slayer was “a little bit about being the anti-L.A. band, because L.A. was [where] all the hair bands were getting popular,” says guitarist Kerry King, a founding member of Slayer. “It was difficult for us to get bookings.”

Meanwhile, San Francisco venues opened their arms to thrash.

“I think the Bay Area was great for thrash because… we were really kind of ground zero for all this European metal making its way over stateside,” says Gary Holt, a Bay Area native who’s played guitar in Slayer since founding member Jeff Hanneman died in 2013.

Slayer: The Origins of Thrash in San Francisco, CA is part of an interactive map on view at the National Museum of American History in downtown D.C., and it’s also viewable online (watch it below).

The film is part of a series called “Places of (Musical) Invention,” which has looked at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, among other locations.

That’s because Hammerly and his bandmates have grappled with a series of setbacks in the run-up to Black Ocean Waves. In August 2011, King Giant’s rhythm guitarist, David Kowalski, broke his femur while filming the music video for “Appomattox,” the first track on King Giant’s previous record. That LP, Dismal Hollow, came out in early 2012 — and while Kowalski managed to fight through his pain and play a release show while sitting in a chair, he had to undergo another surgery immediately after the performance.

Then in October 2012, a week before King Giant was scheduled to play another local gig, lead guitarist Todd Ingram fell, breaking both his wrist and fretting hand. That injury — and the multiple surgeries and rehab it required — forced the band to cancel not only that comeback show, but also its entire Dismal Hollow tour.

Out of necessity, King Giant changed course. “For long periods of time we simply couldn’t play live due to the medical issues,” Ingram says. “So we just focused on writing and making a new album.”

Fans got an early listen to that new album in May, when King Giant previewed it at a Metal Night I co-hosted at Fair Winds Brewing. The band had planned to sell Black Ocean Waves during its release show at Springfield, Virginia, venue Empire, until another setback struck: The venue abruptly shut down just weeks before the show.

Despite the string of bad luck, King Giant finally released Black Ocean Waves on June 30 — and fittingly, it’s a gloomy record that still manages to find glimmers of hope amid the darkness.

The LP includes several uptempo — even catchy — tunes, including “Trail of Thorns” and “Requiem for a Drunkard,” suggesting a resolute strength achieved through overcoming hardship. That hardship didn’t just stem from the band’s injuries.

The song “There Were Bells,” Ingram says, “expresses our heartbreak at losing so many friends to addictions, suicide and other tragedies over the past few years. We have had to say goodbye to so many people we care about in such a short amount of time.”

Elsewhere, Black Ocean Waves weaves tales of adventure and mishap, usually led by a tough-as-nails protagonist who busies himself by toppling obstacles, venturing on gruesome killing sprees and — in “Blood of the Lamb” — joining a church of snake handlers.

Hammerly excels at adding a relatable human element to these songs, and despite the often questionable ethics of the characters involved, he’s surprisingly adept at making listeners feel as though they’re walking in the narrator’s shoes.

Take “Red Skies,” which tells the story of a man lured onto a boat to be murdered by the ship’s crew — except the crew has severely underestimated his tenacity, and they’re the ones who end up dead. It’s a macabre scene, but Hammerly doesn’t tell the tale with the alpha-male, tough-guy tone you’d expect. He takes a left turn, focusing on the killer’s ensuing struggle with guilt. (It also leaves the listener questioning if the crew actually intended to kill the narrator or if it was all a figment of his imagination.)

Doom and stoner metal have a long tradition in the Washington, D.C., region. King Giant has built on that tradition, but found an audience beyond typical metalheads. The band harnesses the fuzzy guitars of ‘70s heavy metal and Southern rock and adds the despair of blues and the storytelling of country western, imparting a blue-collar grit to the band’s sound.

From solos bathed in wah-wah to whiskey-soaked tales of hardship, Black Ocean Waves sets a high-water mark for the region’s metal scene this year. But it’s King Giant’s thoughtful songwriting — crafted with an eye toward the band’s own hard-luck experiences — that gives the record its heft.

King Giant’s Black Ocean Waves is available on iTunes and Bandcamp. Preview it below.

When guitarist Malcolm Brickhouse, bassist Alec Atkins and drummer Jarad Dawkins performed on the street in Times Square, a video of their performance went viral, leading to a record deal with Sony and festival performances and tours. They’re the subjects of the documentary Breaking a Monster, and a book about their journey, titled Unlocking the Truth: Three Brooklyn Teens on Life, Friendship and Making the Band (with a foreword by Questlove of The Roots), was published in May.

In advance of the band’s show Thursday morning at Wolf Trap’s Theatre-in-the-Woods, I caught up with Brickhouse (age 14), Atkins (14) and Dawkins (13) over email.

Bandwidth: Whose idea was the Times Square performance?

Jarad Dawkins: The idea of going in Times Square was Malcolm’s mom and dad. Since they work in the heart of Times Square, they knew all about it. They knew that tourists come to Times Square for sightseeing, so they thought we would get good exposure there.

Were you nervous to set up and play in the street like that?

Malcolm Brickhouse: Not really. I think we were more excited because we had an audience. It was much better than playing in my basement.

How has Unlocking the Truth’s sound changed in the years since that video was posted?

JD: It has changed because as we grow, our musical influences change. Nowadays, we write more intense and melodic songs, which I like a lot. I feel that a good song always gives a message and that’s what we are doing.

You’ve played at clubs and at festivals like Coachella and SXSW, but your show on Thursday is at Wolf Trap’s Theatre-in-the-Woods, which is Wolf Trap’s summer series for children. How is performing for an audience of your peers different from performing for an audience that’s mostly adults?

Alec Atkins: The adults are more likely to enjoy our music and will truly understand where we are coming from. But an audience of our peers might have a not so good reaction because unlike an adult audience, they are not nearly as mature.

JD: I prefer adults but kids are good too because you need kids to increase your fanbase and for them to really buy your music. Adults take music more seriously where kids see music everywhere. They are the ones who are really going to buy your product. So kids are very important to us.

MB: I think the main difference is the crowd’s reaction. Adults like our music but are surprised that we are kids. The kids who like our music are surprised that we are playing metal. Adults are too, but I prefer any audience who likes our music.

“[We want to] become one of the biggest metal bands in the world and to be not just one predominantly because of race. People from any race can listen to us as well. I want Unlocking the Truth to be universal.” —Jarad Dawkins

You’ve gotten to perform with and meet a lot of great bands in the metal scene. Which band has been your favorite to open for and to meet? Any cool stories about meeting one of your idols?

MB: We have met so many great bands like Guns N’ Roses, Marilyn Manson, Motörhead, Chelsea Grin, Motionless In White, Metallica, but we became very good friends — just like family — with Living Colour. Doug, Vernon, Will, Corey, those guys are the best. They’re like our new uncles.

JD: Marilyn Manson was my favorite just because he treated us with great hospitality from beginning to end. I just thank him so much. I would love to tour with him again in the future.

What’s it like for you now being an idol or role model that kids look up to?

MB: I don’t consider myself an idol, but I am proud that we are looked at as role models. We want everyone to know that they shouldn’t give up on their dreams no matter what people say.

JD: It feels great because now kids really see that dreams do come true and that they don’t have to be scared to try them.

What do you see is the future of Unlocking the Truth? What are your goals and plans for the band?

JD: Just to become one of the biggest metal bands in the world and to be not just one predominantly because of race. People from any race can listen to us as well. I want Unlocking the Truth to be universal.

Unlocking the Truth performs the morning of July 9 at Wolf Trap.

At 43, Matt Pike is the walking embodiment of heavy metal, and his band High On Fire — formed in the wake of the seminal ’90s doom outfit Sleep — revels in metal tradition. The boundaries Pike, drummer Des Kensel and bassist Jeff Matz set for themselves are narrow and rigid, which can invite a risk of self-plagiarization. But at their best, they achieve unique liberation within those self-imposed confines, condensing metal’s visceral power into one ferocious, pounding, often devastating whole.

By employing five distinctly different producers to helm the band’s previous six albums, it was as if Pike and High On Fire were constantly in search of the right fit, and in Kurt Ballou they appear to have found a kindred spirit. Three years after helping to rejuvenate the band’s sound on 2012’s De Vermis Mysteriis, the partnership with the renowned Converge guitarist has yielded a new album in Luminiferous that’s even better. It vividly captures High On Fire’s unique chemistry, presenting it in a tone that’s both warm and aggressive to the point of leaping out at the listener.

In the end, though, it’s not about what a High On Fire album sounds like, but how it sounds like High On Fire; how inspired Pike is; how catchy those throttling songs are. The trio can churn out music with astonishing efficiency by now, but without great songs those efforts aren’t worth much. What you hear in Luminiferous‘ nine tracks is quintessential Pike: His riffs are imposing; his solos, so deceptively melodic and expressive, reach toward the heavens; and that growl sounds stronger than ever after a few years of healthy living. Kensel is a perfect foil throughout, his tom-tom-laden rhythms creating a wall of percussion; they only enhance the primal, rampaging feel of “The Black Plot,” “Slave The Hive,” “Carcosa” and “Luminiferous.”

To dissect Pike’s lyrics would be mentally exhausting, and even his own explanations of the themes can result in hilariously convoluted monologues. He remains obsessed with conspiracy theories, aliens and alien conspiracy theories, saying in a statement a month ago, “We’re doing our part to expose The Elite and the fingers they have in religion, media, governments and financial world downfall and their relationship to all of our extraterrestrial connections in the race to control this world.” Taken at face value, though, Pike can be seen as a demented genius, a hesher poet who spews lines with playful humor and surprisingly effective rhythm. “Best close your thighs cause the Gods come a-raping … Conjure life, inject the conjecture … The Ḥashshāshīn’s ​fate is forged on deeds of golden thrones.” You don’t need to know what the hell he’s carrying on about to find it grand in its own nonsensical way, a veritable Necronomicon of metal gobbledygook.

Interestingly, though, Pike does throw listeners a curveball, stepping further away from the usual riffs and opting for contemplation over confrontation. Much as the ballad “Love Me Forever” raised Motörhead fans’ eyebrows 24 years ago, “The Cave” finds High On Fire slowing down and quieting down. Its serpentine guitar and bass line sounds bluesy and exotic at the same time, with Pike showcasing a surprisingly emotive singing voice. Best of all, his words are genuinely evocative, as they directly address his battle to find sobriety and a new lease on life: “Work your art and do it well / Took the road to living hell / Past is then and now is now / Escaped the reaper with our vow.” Far from a case of the band stepping too far outside its comfort zone, it’s actually an exceptional example of dynamics in metal songwriting, as sedate verses and roaring choruses ebb and flow in authoritative fashion.

Smartly placed within the album’s second half, “The Cave” prevents monotony from setting in, which in turn makes its climactic final 13 minutes all the more riveting, capped off by the stately and commanding closer “The Lethal Chamber.” Finding the right combination of adherence to formula and subtle experimentation is the biggest challenge for any metal band that doesn’t want to stray too far from the musical path it’s chosen, and Luminiferous succeeds mightily. For High On Fire to exude this much vigor 17 years into its existence only reaffirms the band’s mastery of the form.

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