Nothing Shady About Highly Suspect

2025-02-17

Orlando, FL –

There’s nothing shady about the talents of Highly Suspect.

The alt rockers capped a tour supporting their newest album As Above, So Below with two final shows at House of Blues Orlando over February 14 and 15.

While I’ve been listening to Highly Suspect since their debut album Mister Asylum released in 2015, it’s taken me 10 years to actually catch them on tour. Live, Highly Suspect takes on new dimensions as they give familiar songs room to breathe and take on new identities.

Show opener “Bath Salts” set the tone with an extended break midway with just bass and drums thumping out a beat while frontman Johnny Stevens amped up the crowd. Behind it came “Claudeland,” a relentless punk-infused jam that got heads banging.

“Mom” dropped the tempo just a hair while giving Stevens a forum for soulful guitar solos. It also showcased the talents of bassist Rich Meyer and drummer Ryan Meyer (twin brothers), who together built a thick and fuzzy foundation so Stevens could build soaring delicate solos.

“Mexico” was the first new song on the list, towing behind it “Summertime Voodoo.” The latter is a stripped down number with lots of opportunity for Stevens to chase tangents on the guitar before returning to the main theme. The spoken word coda at the end was sprinkled throughout with improvised curlicues of sound that brought to mind John Frusciante and Carlos Santana.

Highly Suspect weaves in between multiple genres, with their sound most often landing around alternative/garage rock flavored with gritty Chicago blues. However they’ve always flirted with desert rock themes and both “Plastic Boxes” and “Suicide Machine” later in the set deftly pick up the crown left behind by Kyuss and Monster Magnet.

Squarely mid-set was “My Name is Human,” one of multiple singles in the 2010s that catapulted Highly Suspect to the top of the Billboard US Mainstream Rock Songs chart. Again, Stevens and crew took their time, dressing an old friend in new clothes to make an almost 10-year-old song feel fresh and exciting. It worked extraordinarily well.

Meyer swapped the bass for an acoustic guitar to play the beautiful, soulful “Arizona,” while keyboardist (and sometime guitarist) Mark Schwartz added a layer of strings. The aptly named “The Reset” got the energy going again with its bouncy, almost reggae rhythm pointing all the way back to the band’s early days as a Sublime cover band in Cape Cod, Mass.

While there were multiple fan favorites that could close the set, everyone knew it could only really be “Serotonia” to finish the night. From its unforgettable opening lines (“I wish that everyone I knew was dead, so that I’d never have to pick up the phone…”), the evocative pictures of Golden Age Hollywood and a giant, roaring chorus to close, the song put the last strokes on an unforgettable night.