High on Fire Cancel Tour Due to Matt Pike Medical Emergency
High on Fire have been forced to pull out of the Speed of the Wizard tour, which they were co-headlining with Municipal Waste. According to a press release, frontman Matt Pike has to have part of one of his toes removed.
“Matt has a medical emergency culminating in the partial amputation of one of his toes," notes the statement. "The scheduling of this procedure is immediate and the recovery time will overlap our intended tour with [Municipal Waste]. We will unfortunately be unable to participate in this tour but will be back stronger than ever in 2019!”
The tour, which also includes Toxic Holocaust and Haunt, is still going on as planned. It is set to begin on Nov. 2 in Dallas and will run through the end of the month.
"First and foremost, we wish our friend Matt the best of luck with his recovery," the members of Municipal Waste said. "We need him, the metal world in general needs him. We would much rather have him miss a tour to heal up rather than not having any more Matt Pike music in the future. High on Fire ‘s new album is amazing, and we love him and his bandmates so much. That being said, after much discussion, us, Toxic and Haunt are still going to do the tour. It just makes sense. Why make something negative worse? Get better, Matt, we love you.”
Earlier this month, High on Fire released Electric Messiah, their first record since 2015's Lumniferous. The title track was inspired by late Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister.
“I had a dream about Lemmy,” Pike said. “When Lemmy was still alive, I always got compared to Lemmy, so I had this dream where he got pissed at me. He gave me a bunch of shit, basically, and was hazing me. Not that he didn’t approve of me, but, like, I was being hazed. The song is me telling the world that I could never fill Lemmy’s shoes because Lemmy’s Lemmy. I wanted to pay homage to him in a great way. And it turned out to be such a good title that the guys said we should call the album Electric Messiah."