Greetings and welcome to another edition of Bleeding Priest’s Bay Area Metal Spotlight. For this edition, I'm going to be covering an album by a band I've been a fan of since pretty much day one. I've been following them since they started. I went to their first handful of shows, and even my old band, Old Grandad, played their first show in San Francisco — they opened for us, believe it or not.
Wed. Sep. 15, 1999 | High on Fire, Old Grandad | CoCo Club, SF, CA |
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Sat. Jan. 10, 1999 | DRI, High on Fire, Old Grandad | Maritime Hall, SF, CA |
Mon. Nov. 23, 1998 | Old Grandad, High on Fire | CW Saloon, SF, CA |
I'm talking about High on Fire and their album Surrounded by Thieves. This is my favorite. I mean, there's no such thing as a bad High on Fire album, but this one happens to be my favorite. It came out in 2002, I believe. This album was a huge turning point for the band. Even though it's only their second album, they made some drastic changes leading up to it — musically and otherwise.
This would be the last album with the original lineup: Matt Pike on guitar and vocals, George Rice on bass, and Dez Kenzel on drums. George left the band after the tour cycle for Surrounded by Thieves, which was really surprising. My old band, The Cutthroats 9, did a U.S. tour with High on Fire — we supported them for like six or seven weeks across the U.S. with Lost Goat opening. I didn’t see any signs of them not getting along or George not being happy. They were playing great, the shows were awesome, and everyone seemed to get along. So I don't know why he left, but it was a shock to me.
That’s one big thing about this album: it marks the end of the first era of High on Fire. Musically, they were already changing and shifting gears. Their first album, The Art of Self-Defense, is a great debut — it shocked the scene and shocked the world. But it’s definitely more along the lines of what Sleep was doing, though supercharged with way more hyperactive drumming by Dez. Musically, the songs were close to what Sleep was doing, but Surrounded by Thieves is a major jump forward — a lot more aggressive, much faster tempos, exploring the thrashier and more Motörhead-y side at times. They've kept that sound up until present-day High on Fire.
This album started their trajectory toward playing faster music and eventually incorporating double bass. There’s no double bass on this album, or the first, or even the third, I believe. I was a little disappointed when Dez eventually started using double bass because he didn’t need it. He played a four-piece kit, and it sounded like a full-on metal double-bass kit. He made a lot of sounds and a lot of music with those four drums, and he could do the artificial double bass thing with his floor tom better than anyone. So when he finally got a double bass, I was kind of disappointed, but I got over it pretty quickly — it definitely brought more to their music, and they could play even faster and do straight-up thrash parts.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. This album is great. Like I said, my old band Cutthroats 9 toured with them for one of their U.S. tours for this record. I know Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. once said if you're touring right, it'll take five years off your life — each tour takes five years off your life. I have to say that this tour with High on Fire applies to that rule for sure.
I'll give you one quick story about the kind of debauchery we were getting into on that tour. It was an every-night thing — nonstop. When we played Phoenix, we stayed at a friend of Matt Pike’s house, who had a warehouse space, like a barn-type structure. Inside it was a full backline for a band — drum set, amps, guitars, bass, the whole thing. We spent most of the night partying at this dude’s house, partaking in adult recreational activity, and around 4:00 in the morning we decided to go jam.
So we went into the barn: Matt Pike on guitar, me on drums, Chris Spencer on second guitar (or maybe bass), and Dez on vocals. We were jamming on ZZ Top, Judas Priest, whatever. Eventually, I started getting too metal for Chris and he bailed, went back into the house. So it was just me, Matt, and Dez, and we ended up jamming on Exodus’s Toxic Waltz. Or trying to, at least — it was like 5:30 in the morning, so you can imagine how well we were playing.
While we were jamming, Dez forgot the lyrics to the song, so he decided to write his own and renamed it The Radioactive Shuffle. I even remember the chorus:
“Start a fight and get into a scuffle,
'Cause everybody’s doing the Radioactive Shuffle.”
That’s the kind of tour we had. It was a lot of fun. Great times.
I miss Dez. It took me a long time to accept the fact that there’s a High on Fire without him on drums. Honestly, I still haven’t fully accepted it. I've seen them since he left — they're still great, putting out great albums, and their current drummer is doing a good job. But nothing will ever beat Dez and that old-school High on Fire sound.
I love this album. I love Dez. I hope you’re doing well. And yeah — check this album out if you're unfamiliar. Surrounded by Thieves.