High on Fire’s Matt Pike: ‘I’ve Fallen Off the Wagon a Few Times Since I Went to Rehab’

Two years ago, High on Fire chose to drop off the 2012 Mayhem Festival so frontman Matt Pike could enter rehab for alcohol addiction. Pike has spoken about his sobriety periodically, but in a new interview, the High on Fire / Sleep legend admits to having "fallen off the wagon a few times" since his rehab stay.

Matt Pike spent about a month in rehab during the summer of 2012, leaving with a goal of maintaining his sobriety after decades of hard partying. "I’m doing good now, I’m feeling healthy and I’m learning how to deal with it," Pike told Full Metal Jackie in 2013. "I still love partying, I just watch everybody else get drunk and smoke a little bit of weed and I’ll be cool."

In a new interview with Australian online radio host AndrewHaug.com, Pike admitted to multiple relapses while bouncing back shortly after. "I've fallen off the wagon a few times since I went to rehab," Pike begins. "[But] I get better and better at, like, when I do have a drink or mess up, not being too hard on myself, but getting right back on the wagon. That's kind of part of the process in getting sober. Every now and then, you have a flaw and you've gotta accept that you can't be good at anything without practicing it."

The frontman continues, "You know, practicing being sober in my life, there is a lot of clarity, and with a lot of clarity, there sometimes comes depression and anxiety and you've gotta just accept that part of it too. So there is a lot to it, but I'm definitely a lot healthier and I definitely don't write all my music in a blackout, like I used to, although I did come up with some good stuff in a blackout. I just have a different approach nowadays."

High on Fire began work on their follow-up to 2012's 'De Vermis Mysteriis' back in May, eyeing a 2015 release. "I'm not sure how [the new material] sounds yet … I know what the demos are like," Pike explains. "It's what you'd expect out of High on Fire, only a little… Like every record, we try to up it a little bit instead of just being average. So that's kind of the direction it's taking. I think it's gonna be a pretty amazing one. And we're all just getting better at our instruments, so hopefully that reflects on the recording when we're done with it. We're gonna be going into the studio in September, hopefully, or October, and it should be out around February, if all goes well."

We'd like to wish Matt Pike all the best in his sobriety efforts. Stay tuned for more High on Fire updates as news breaks.