SCUM ANGEL IS the new project led by Matt Pike of High on Fire. The band may be, in fact, led by someone else, now that I think of it, but music is a weird thing. When a person's name has a certain amount of cachet, more than other members', they often become the de facto focal point of their band.

If you didn't catch it, I've just made a very acute insight into the inner workings of the music world. It's my job to impart knowledge that I have and you don't – as an ambassador between that shadowy, exclusive universe and gentle readers like you, who know nothing. I can also tell you if a band is good or not. You should always listen to me, because before writing an article or seeing a band, I spend almost all my time rigorously researching facts and listening to the music so that I can be a well-informed and accurate judge of what is good and what is bad. You and I enter into a compact here, in which you read my words and believe them. And it is my duty as a rock critic to honor that trust and to give you my honest feelings about a band, since they are the correct feelings to have. No matter what.

Anyway, while writing that paragraph, I learned that Scum Angel is not so much led by singer Matt Pike as fronted by him, and the band is more likely led by Bay Area punk-metal icon Andy Christ of El Dopa and Econochrist fame. Christ has taken up guitar duties in Scum Angel, where in the past he had been a bassist.

Scum Angel recently performed at the Golden Bull in Oakland, and by all accounts the show was a success. The five-piece played a combination of heavy classic rock and power metal, something of a throwback to '90s sludge metal with enough Iron Maiden-ish prog thrown in to make it new. The band has two types of songs: heavy, stonerish hard rock numbers based on three accepted riffs – one for the verse, one for the chorus, and one for the bridge – and a hybrid of post-hardcore punk-metal and Iron Maiden's galloping bass lines and twin guitar leads.

Pike's vocals were guttural and screamed, but his tattooed, shirtless chest was the main attraction for many of the people there. Almost half the audience was female – a pretty rare ratio at metal shows. Whenever I see Pike perform, I am always faced with the question, "Just how much metal-babe ass does this guy get?" The only answer is, "All of it." Scum Angel plays up this angle pretty well, but not intentionally – it's just hard to have a band with such a charismatic frontperson and not have the guy take over.

The best part of the show was this one dude who was ruling the pit with one hand in his pocket. I couldn't tell if he had forgotten it was there, or if he was doing it because his hand was horribly misshapen or slimy, or if he was just stupid. Anyway, I remember thinking, "I should mention that in the live review. It's good for at least 30 words." The second-best thing that happened was when this really hot girl wearing a miniskirt walked past me. She was looking hungrily at Pike the whole time.

After seeing this band and after seeing Om (with Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, who were in Sleep with Pike) the other night, all I can think is, "Jesus Christ. Why doesn't Sleep just get back together?" We all want it. It's like at the end of Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen spits out, "Even the jungle wanted him dead" over footage of Marlon Brando farting. That's all I'm going to say because I feel like it's the subject we're not allowed to bring up. But a Sleep reunion show? It would be monumental. I probably just jinxed it.

Back to Scum Angel. Scum Angel will not appeal to as broad a group as both Sleep and High on Fire tend to, but that is a good thing. It means Scum Angel is a deeper cut into the metal pantheon and will not attract as many metalhead wannabes (including me) to shows as High on Fire.

A scary thing is actually happening in metal. There is this band called Early Man that re-creates the thrash-metal movement of the '80s, but does it with the self-conscious perfection of indie rockers. Very weird and wrong. Scum Angel does something similar in that it's resurrecting an old style, only the references to crusty hardcore, early death metal, Black Sabbath, Maiden, and even Dio are way beyond the vocabularies of anyone who did not grow up listening to those types of music. Metal for metal fans. (Mike McGuirk)