From across the Atlantic in Scotland, High Fade brings their genre-busting sound stateside with an intensive 55 shows across the country, including one in Orlando this week.
With only guitar, bass and drums, High Fade create a unique stew of heavy vocals with funky and ferocious instrumentation, an enticing prospect for fans of Primus and Faith No More. Their first tour in America took place supporting The Cat Empire in 2023. Now they’re back and headlining with support from the likes of Mirrage and Deeohgee.
This exhaustive tour schedule — a contrast to many of their U.K. peers, who just hit the coasts and then head back to Blighty — is not unusual for the band. Since their start in 2018, High Fade have played over 1,500 shows, with 257 of them happening in one year.
High Fade was founded by guitarist and lead singer Harry Valentino, who started his musical career busking on the streets of his hometown, Edinburgh.
“If you showed me a tour poster [then], like the one that we’re on right now, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, you’re funny.’ Like, ha, ha, whatever. Because it does still feel pretty surreal. For us, it is insane,” Valentino tells Orlando Weekly.
Despite their growing popularity, High Fade was a hard sell in their native Edinburgh music scene. After their first tour across America in 2023, the band would return home triumphantly … to go back to playing pubs and busking.
“People were like ‘What the hell is this?’ And I saw it as a challenge,” Valentino says. “If people were like ‘what the hell is this?,’ then we must be doing something.”
Indifference back home or not, High Fade have an ever-growing fanbase in the U.S.
“They’ve been so welcoming to us. We have a lot of people that hit us up and they’ll offer us a place to stay or they’ll bring us some food or they’ll just come hang out and they’re a good time and we love that. We love hanging out with our American fanbase,” Valentino says.
It’s not unusual to find the band before and after the gig hanging out at the merch table. They love talking with fans and finding community wherever they are. Whether it’s been six months or two years, the band will often pick up right where they left off with fans the last time.
“Sometimes people seem surprised by that. There’s a guy in San Diego who was like ‘I never thought you’d be hanging at your own merch table,’” Valentino says. “That’s wack if we’re not. What am I gonna do? Sit in the green room and not talk to anybody? I love talking to people!”
The interactivity offstage is matched by how interactive the band is onstage. To Valentino, the audience is almost a part of the band. They’re playing with the crowd, not to it.
“People show up at the merch table and are like ‘I’m so buzzed for the show.’ And then that gets us fired up and because we’re fired up, the crowd’s fired up. It’s nice to see this, like, exchange almost,” Valentino says.
Throughout the band’s eight-year history, Valentino has been joined by a number of drummers and bassists. The band’s current line-up has been together for about a year. Flanking Valentino currently is Oliver Sentence on bass and Heath Campbell on drums.
“I’m not here to force them to play like the last guy. That’s not what I want,” Valentino says. “I think what makes the band’s sound is by giving everyone enough of a playground to go, run around in and do their own thing.”
In May, High Fade released their latest album Twice as Nice. Their last album, Life’s Too Fast, was recorded almost entirely live. This time around the band was more intentional with how they wanted their songs to sound. The drums were recorded in Nashville and the guitars in London. The amalgamation of sounds and spaces turned into the fine-tuned funk-rock album they’re touring behind now.
“We got a lot of good stuff for this album in terms of how we wanted it to sound, and I think we got very close. I’m not going to say perfect, because it’s never going to be perfect,” Valentino says.
High Fade is bringing their high-energy and unpredictable music to the Abbey for a night of punk-meets-prog jams and conversation. Be sure to catch them both onstage and offstage, at the merch table.
7 p.m. Friday, July 24, The Abbey, 100 S. Eola Drive, abbeyorlando.com, $30.56.
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This article appears in July 22-28, 2026.