Words: Kathryn Edwards  //  Photos: Ryan Hildrew

Graphic Nature

British nu-metalcore outfit Graphic Nature waste no time dragging the day into gear, Harvey Freeman prowling the front of the stage with a rawness that matches the confessional, mental-health-heavy lyrics accompanying everything they play. Pete Woolven and Matas Michailovskis’s riffs land somewhere between early-2000s metalcore and a modern electronic sheen, and there’s a real sense of a band on the way up rather than one happy to tread water. It’s an intense way to shake off the cobwebs of the night before, whether the crowd’s ready for it or not.

Castle Rat

Riley Pinkerton, in full ‘Rat Queen’ regalia, leads her medieval fantasy doom quartet through a set that’s as much theatre as it is music, complete with a rival ‘Rat Reaperess’ stalking the stage and enough Frank Frazetta-inspired imagery to make it feel like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign come to life, minus the twenty-sided dice arguments. Franco Vittore’s guitar work channels early Black Sabbath in the best way, thick and unhurried, while the crowd, half bemused and half utterly charmed, lean fully into the absurdity of it all. Underneath the swords and chainmail, the songwriting holds up on its own merits, and it’s the funniest, most purely joyful way anyone could have asked to start the day.

Kittie

Thirty (!!!) years into their career, Kittie’s return to the UK feels like a victory lap they’ve more than earned. Morgan Lander’s vocals swing effortlessly between melodic clean and full-throated scream, sister Mercedes locks the whole thing down from behind the kit, and Tara McLeod and Ivy Vujic drive the riffs with a weight that belies just how long this band has been doing this. There’s real emotion in the field, not nostalgia for its own sake, but a palpable sense that this reunion has always been about wanting to play together rather than cashing in, and the crowd responds in kind.

Orbit Culture

Sweden’s Orbit Culture bring a set that’s tight, technical and relentless. Niklas Karlsson’s vocals swing between guttural growls and soaring cleans, while Richard Hansson’s lead guitar work adds a melodic sheen to the band’s groove-laden death metal foundation. This is a band who’ve been building steadily for over a decade, and it shows in how effortlessly they command the tent, no wasted motion, no filler, just a wall of precise, punishing riffs from start to finish. Considering how far they’ve travelled to get here, they don’t waste a second of the stage time either.

Testament

Testament arrive with the kind of authority only four decades in the game can buy. Chuck Billy’s voice remains a monstrous instrument, and the twin-guitar interplay between Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick is as sharp as it’s ever been, technical without ever losing the raw thrash urgency that made this band’s name in the first place. Steve Di Giorgio’s bass work threads through everything with real fluidity, and by the time the band launch into set staple ‘Practice What You Preach’, the whole field is one enormous, chanting mass. Bay Area thrash royalty, and they’ve still got the stamina to prove it, unlike most of the crowd by this point in the weekend.

Black Label Society

Zakk Wylde struts out looking, as ever, like he’s wandered in from the end of the world on a Harley he’s somehow also playing guitar on. Black Label Society deliver exactly the riff-heavy, blues-soaked slab of heaviness everyone came for. Guitarist Dario Lorina trades off with Wylde in a series of increasingly ridiculous guitar duels, at one point the pair playing behind their heads, Hendrix-style, while somehow staying note-perfect throughout. The biggest moment, though, belongs to ‘No More Tears’, the Ozzy Osbourne classic Wylde co-wrote and helped popularise; with Ozzy’s passing still fresh, the crowd sings every word back with real emotion before Wylde snaps the momentum straight back into gear with the enormous riff of ‘Stillborn’.

Body Count

After ten years of asking, Bloodstock finally lands Body Count and it is every bit the event the crowd hoped for. Ice-T struts across the stage like a man half his age, spitting bars with the same fury he’s carried since the early 90’s, while Ernie C’s guitar work proves, once and for all, that this was never a novelty side project. It’s a proper, ferocious metal band that just happens to have a Law & Order star out front. The set barrels through the Slayer-referencing intro into ‘Postmortem’ and ‘Point the Finger’, pulling zero punches along the way, and by the time ‘The Purge’ arrives, the whole field is delirious. It’s one of the most electric sets of the entire weekend, and everyone in the tent knows it.

Dream State

Over on the Sophie Lancaster stage, Welsh outfit Dream State bring a welcome change of pace, with soaring post-hardcore melody and dynamic shifts rather than pure brute force. Vocalist Jessie Powell has real command of the stage, moving from delicate cleans into throat-shredding screams without ever losing control, while Aled Evans’s guitar work threads electronic textures through the heavier moments. It’s a set that rewards a closer listen than most of what’s on offer today, and there’s a devoted pocket of the crowd clearly delighted to catch them.

Mushroomhead

There’s an eerie hush as Mushroomhead’s masked, jumpsuited figures take the stage, drummer Skinny the sole ever-present member of a band who’ve made mystery and reinvention part of their whole identity since 1993 (and who’d very much like it noted that they were doing this before certain other masked bands got famous for it). The masks alone make this one of the most visually striking sets of the weekend, but it’s not just spectacle; the layered vocals, industrial textures and unpredictable structures keep the tent locked in throughout.

200 Stab Wounds

200 Stab Wounds strip death metal back to its rawest, most gleefully grotesque essentials. Steve Buhl’s vocals are a buzzsaw roar over Owen Pooley’s machine-gun drumming, and there’s no pretence of complexity here, just chugging, filthy, old-school riffs delivered with real conviction and song titles that suggest the band spent a worrying amount of time researching surgical trauma. It’s exactly the kind of shot of adrenaline the tent needs deep into a long Sunday, and it does the job perfectly.

Wrex

Tucked away on the New Blood stage, Wrex offer something a little different: a wall of sound built on electro-tinged alt-rock energy rather than straightforward metal aggression. It’s a set that leans into release and catharsis over technicality, and while the crowd here is more modest than on the main stages, there’s a real warmth to the performance, a band clearly delighted just to be playing Bloodstock at all, wristbands and all.

Judas Priest

There’s a sense of occasion in the air long before Judas Priest even take the stage. With Rob Halford having grown up barely twenty miles up the road in Walsall, this is about as close to a homecoming as the Metal Gods could get without playing the Black Country itself, and Halford knows it, striding out in a jacket bearing the Black Country flag to an eruption from the crowd that rivals anything else all weekend. The opening run is nothing short of ruthless: ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Comin”, ‘Metal Gods’ and ‘Breaking the Law’ arrive back to back, and the whole field is bellowing every word within seconds, sunburn and blisters temporarily forgotten.

From there, the ‘Faithkeepers’ set settles into a proper greatest-hits masterclass, ‘The Ripper’, ‘Turbo Lover’ and ‘Victim of Changes’ all landing with the same power they’ve carried for decades. Halford confirms, to a fresh wave of noise, that the band are already working on new material, a remarkable thought fifty-plus years into their career and roughly forty albums past the point most bands would have called it a day. The encore is where it all peaks: ‘Electric Eye’ and ‘Hell Bent for Leather’, complete with Halford’s now-iconic Harley-Davidson ride-on, before ‘Living After Midnight’ closes the night out. It’s a set that encapsulates everything Bloodstock stands for, heavy metal history delivered by the people who wrote the book on it, still performing like they’ve got everything to prove.

And that’s it. Bloodstock’s 25th anniversary is done, and what a way to close it out. From Castle Rat’s gloriously absurd theatrics first thing in the day, through Body Count finally, deservedly getting their moment, to Judas Priest bringing the whole thing home barely twenty miles from where it all started for Rob Halford, this has been a Sunday that found new gears right up until the final note. Muddy, hoarse and thoroughly worn out, the Catton Park crowds start the long walk back to their tents already talking about next year, and quietly negotiating with their necks about whether headbanging was really worth it.

Click the image below to see more pictures from Bloodstock Open Air 2026 – Day Three

Words: Kathryn Edwards  //  Photos: Ryan Hildrew

The Scratch

“We’re from Ireland”, shouts vocalist and percussionist Daniel (‘Lango’) Lang, as if that wasn’t already clear from thick Dublin accents and the strong presence of the trad Irish folk music, which, along with heavy metal, makes up their distinct sound. This is a relatively new band, with their first EP only being released in 2018, but they’ve grafted hard over the past 8 years, with their current discography containing three albums, two EPs, and two features on Dropkick Murphys’ 2015 record ‘For the People’; though 2026’s ‘Pull Like a Dog’ makes up the bulk of today’s setlist. It’s 1pm and beers are flying, and the arena has filled up by the time they come on. No sight of people trickling in and out as is often the case with sets scheduled for earlier in the day. There’s a good reason for that: this set is the standout of the weekend, and the crowd is ready and willing to come and get weird. Everyone is dancing from the first second of the first note. It feels impossible not to. There are clear metal elements to this band’s sound; the guitar tones they use, and some pretty tasty riffs throughout, but this set is a bit of a curveball in comparison to everything else on the lineup. That’s in no way a bad thing – this performance fills you with a kind of energy that’s really hard to put into words. By way of an attempt, though; there’s someone in the middle of the circle pit dressed as a banana. Also, it’s not really a circle pit, everyone is just skipping in a circle. Some people have linked arms and are skipping in pairs. Lovely, really. Acoustic guitars and a cajon at a metal festival shouldn’t work, and yet here we are, jumping around with hands in the air for four lads from Dublin who used to be in an actual metal band before they swapped amps for wood and strings. Lango, Conor Dockery, Cathal McKenna, and Gary Regan turn the field into a hooley within thirty seconds, trad runs colliding with riffs that smack just as hard unplugged as anything with a Marshall stack behind it. It’s pure chaos laced with unbridled joy, and it’s the closest thing Bloodstock has to a session in the corner of a Dublin pub, if that pub also had several thousand people crowd-surfing in it.

Urne

Urne don’t so much play a set as build a slow-burning storm. Joe Nally, Angus Neyra and Richard Wiltshire’s sludge-thrash-prog hybrid is dense and unhurried, riffs stacking up like weather fronts before they finally break. Nally’s vocals sit somewhere between a growl and a lament, giving even the heaviest passages an odd, aching kind of melancholy, while Neyra’s guitar work twists through tempo changes that never feel showy for the sake of it. It’s a set for the patient, no easy hooks, no crowd-pleasing shortcuts, and there’s a stretch in the middle where it would be easy for a festival crowd’s attention to drift. It doesn’t, though. By the time the heaviest passages land, the tent’s gone quiet in the way it only does when a band’s earned real attention rather than demanded it, and there’s a small crowd near the front who look like they’ve just found something they’ll be obsessing over for months.

Vended

There’s a very obvious question hanging over the tent before Vended even plug in, and to their credit, they spend the whole set trying to answer it on their own terms, even though, yes – they sound exactly like early Slipknot, even down to the vocals – no prizes for guessing who Griffin Taylor learnt from. He prowls the stage like he’s got something to prove, which, fair enough, he probably has, while Simon Crahan pounds away behind him with a similar point to make. ‘Asylum’ lands early and sets the tone, all hard rock riffing and doom-y breakdowns, before ‘Nihilism’ whips the crowd into its most frantic state of the whole set. Guitarists Cole Espeland and Connor Grodzicki keep things tight throughout, and bassist Jeremiah Pugh anchors the low end with consistent weight. Whether all this is enough to shake off the shadow of the Iowa Nine is still up for debate, but nobody in this crowd looks like they care either way, they’re just here for the racket.

Northlane

Slick, heavy, and precision-tooled, Northlane’s brand of progressive metalcore feels like it was built in a lab specifically for festival main stages, in the best way. Marcus Bridge switches from full-throat roar to soaring clean vocals without breaking stride, and when ‘Quantum Flux’ arrives, the whole tent seems to know every word, turning it into one giant, chest-thumping singalong. Jon Deiley, Josh Smith and Nic Pettersen layer in industrial textures that make the whole thing feel bigger than your average breakdown-and-blast-beat crowd-pleaser, and ‘Echo Chamber’ shows off just how far the band have pushed their sound into electronic territory without losing any of the heaviness. Polished doesn’t mean safe here; it means a band who know exactly what they’re doing.

Nevermore

There’s a lump in more than one throat as Nevermore take the stage for the first time in over a decade, and the first time ever without Warrel Dane, who died in 2017 and whose shoes new vocalist Berzan Önen has been handed the near-impossible task of filling. Somehow, though, it works; Jeff Loomis’s guitar lines are as serrated and technical as they’ve ever been, Van Williams still hits like a train behind the kit, and when ‘Enemies of Reality’ kicks in, Önen sings the old material with real reverence rather than imitation, clearly aware of exactly what this performance means to the people watching. New recruits Jack Cattoi and Semir Özerkan slot in like they’ve been there for years, and by the time ‘The River Dragon Has Come’ rolls around, the tent has gone from cautious curiosity to full-throated devotion. It’s a moving second life for one of prog metal’s most missed bands, and by the end there isn’t a dry eye in the tent.

Death Angel

Thrash royalty, and they know it. Formed by teenagers back in 1982 and still going strong more than forty years later, Rob Cavestany and co. play with a speed and precision that shame bands half their age. Mark Osegueda works the whole width of the stage like a man half his years, all wide-eyed energy and constant motion, and ‘Seemingly Endless Time’ proves the old material has lost none of its bite. Ted Aguilar and Cavestany trade off riffs with the kind of chemistry that only decades of playing together can build, while Will Carroll and Damien Sisson keep the rhythm section locked in tight even as ‘Thrown to the Wolves’ pushes the tempo into genuinely dizzying territory. The pit response to the old-school Bay Area riffing is a reminder that thrash this pure never really goes out of fashion, it just waits for the right festival to bring it back round.

Bleed From Within

Glasgow’s finest export a wall of sound that’s part groove, part melody, and entirely relentless. Scott Kennedy’s screams trade off with Steven Jones’s soaring cleans to anthemic effect, and opener ‘Violent Nature’ sets an suitably furious tone from the first note. Craig Gowans and Davie Provan lock in behind them while Ali Richardson drives it all forward from the kit with real precision, while ‘In Place of Your Halo’ draws one of the biggest reactions of the set, its surprise bagpipe breakdown sending the whole tent into a frenzy. Kennedy prowls the front of the stage and pulls the crowd into every chorus like he’s done this a thousand times before, which, at this point, he probably has. Funny to think this all started as a bunch of kids covering Lamb of God at a youth club; now they’re doing the genre just as much justice as their heroes, who happen to be headlining this very festival.

As Saturday draws to a close, we prepare ourselves for our busiest (and hottest) day so far to round off the weekend, after what will probably be an uncomfortably warm night’s sleep. But not before checking out the bin jousting, which is exactly what it sounds like. Can’t forget the bin jousting.

Click the image below to see more pictures from Bloodstock Open Air 2026 – Day Two

Words: Kathryn Edwards  //  Photos: Ryan Hildrew

Skynd

Nothing at Bloodstock looks quite like this. It’s the very beginning of the day, so the audience is comparatively sparse, but everyone who’s decided to start early(ish) today to see SKYND is either unsettled or utterly transfixed. Masked, anonymous performers SKYND (lead vocalist) and Father (multi-instrumentalist) turn true crime into full-blown horror theatre, each song a dramatisation of a real killer or tragedy, and they’re all named as such; standout tracks are ‘Columbine’ and ‘John Wayne Gacy’. It’s less a gig than an art exhibition with a heartbeat. These icy electronics, guttural screams and macabre visuals wouldn’t feel out of place in a slasher film. It’s not surprising that this Australian outfit frequently collaborates with Jonathan Davis of Korn. Not for everyone, but exactly the kind of left-field booking that makes this festival worth the mud.

Life of Agony

The tent’s filling out nicely by the time Life of Agony take to the stage. There’s a heaviness behind what follows not just in the riffs, but in the thirty-odd years of history that lead vocalist Caputo carries with them. Guitarist Joey Z and bassist Alan Robert, both founding members, anchor a sound that’s grunge-tinged and melodic where much of this weekend leans towards the extreme. When they dip into River Runs Red highlights like ‘This Time’ and ‘Weeds’, the emotional gut-punch of that record lands as hard now as it did in 1993. Caputo pauses between songs to thank the crowd for ‘still giving a damn’, and the response makes it clear the feeling’s mutual.

Fit for an Autopsy

FfaA don’t just do breakdowns, they do dread. Will Putney’s production nous translates into a live sound that’s crushing, yet strangely cinematic. It’s all atmosphere and tension before the floor drops out from under everyone on ‘Oh, You Think We’re Distant Now?’. This crowd already knows them well from their run supporting Lamb of God earlier in the year, and it shows; circle pits open before the first chorus of ‘Sound of Sirens’ even lands, and vocalist Joe Badolato barely needs to ask for a wall of death before he gets one.

Biohazard

Brooklyn’s finest are reunited, and it feels so good. The sound of NYHxC colliding with metal and hip-hop hits just as hard thirty-odd years on. The classic lineup of Graziadei, Hambel, Schuler, Seinfeld tear through Urban Discipline-era cuts like ‘Punishment’ and ‘Business as Usual’ as if no time has passed at all, and the tent turns into one enormous, sweaty singalong the second those old-school breakdowns kick in. Shouted phrases about persistence and struggle boom through the speakers before ‘How It Is’, and the pit obliges accordingly. History lesson and party in equal measure. Absolutely delightful.

Municipal Waste

Party thrash exists for exactly this moment. Municipal Waste don’t do subtlety. Tony Foresta bounces around the stage like a man possessed, songs like ‘Born to Party’ and ‘The Art of Partying’ blast past in under two minutes apiece, and the pit is one continuous, gleeful mess of bodies from the first note. Foresta doesn’t so much introduce songs as bark instructions at the crowd. Get down! Get up! Get insane! We’re having a blast, and happily oblige. Zombies, beer and chaos; nobody at Bloodstock is having more fun than the people currently crowd-surfing to this lot.

Neckbreakker

If you don’t know Neckbreakker yet, you will by the end of this set. The young Danes have built their reputation purely on live ferocity, and it’s easy to see why. Their hardcore-inflected breakdowns on tracks like ‘Nakkeknaekker’ collide with old-school death metal brutality, and a band barely out of their teens somehow commands the tent like seasoned headliners. Between songs, frontman Christoffer Bach Kofoed looks genuinely stunned by the size of the pit, laughing about how mental it is for being this early in the day. Easily one of the weekend’s best ‘tell your mates about this one’ discoveries. This isn’t Neckbreakker’s first time at BOA, either – they were here in 2023 on the New Blood stage, returning three years later on the Sophie Lancaster stage. If their track record is anything to go by, we’ll see them climb further up the bill over the next few years.

Sepultura

There’s no getting around what this one means. With the band’s farewell tour drawing to a close later this year, this is very likely the last time Sepultura ever play the UK, and Derrick Green makes sure everyone in the tent knows exactly what’s at stake, telling the crowd how much these final shows mean to the band, and getting the crowd to smile as they stand together and turn their backs towards us to take a massive group picture, before launching into ‘Arise’. Andreas Kisser’s riffs still sound as vital as they did decades ago, and when ‘Roots Bloody Roots’ finally arrives, the whole tent seems to detonate at once. By the closing notes of ‘Ratamahatta’, it’s hard to find anyone not singing along like they’re saying goodbye to an old friend, because, in a sense, they are.

Shining

Probably not the Shining you’re thinking of, Jørgen Munkeby and Co. are a much more joyous affair. This gloriously unclassifiable Norwegian outfit is doing things nobody else on this bill would dare, and it’s a treat to watch. Sax solos erupt out of industrial black metal riffing on ‘The One Inside’, jazz breaks down into blast beats, and the whole thing sounds like nothing so much as a fever dream soundtrack. Munkeby cracks a grin mid-set and asks if anyone brought their inflatable saxophones this time and it looks like a good chunk of the crowd, delightfully, has. A cult crowd turns out to be exactly as wonderfully weird as the band themselves.

Lamb of God

As night finally falls, Lamb of God take the Ronnie James Dio stage like the seasoned headliners they are. Randy Blythe stalks every inch of it, no signs of the two-plus decades since the band clawed their way up from the Richmond hardcore scene as Burn the Priest, and it’s obvious within the first few bars why they’re closing out the first night. The setlist itself intersperses ‘Oblivion’ cuts with classics like ‘Omerta’ and ‘Ruin” Whatever the balance, the new material sits comfortably alongside the classics, proof that a band this far into its career can still write songs that hit as hard live as the ones that made its name.

‘Vigil’, ‘Laid to Rest’ and ‘Redneck’ predictably make up the encore, Nothing all night comes close to the reaction ‘Laid to Rest’ gets. The moment those opening riffs land, the whole field seems to move as one; a mass singalong that drowns out Blythe himself for long stretches, and the biggest pit response of the entire day by some distance. It’s a communal, cathartic chaos that only a veterab headliner could conjure this at the end of such a full-on, sweaty, and tiring Friday of non-stop sets, with legs already gone and sunburn setting in. There’s nothing perfunctory about it either, nor any sense of a band coasting on nostalgia. Thirty-plus years in, Lamb of God still look and sound like they mean every second of it.

And that’s day one of Bloodstock Open Air 2026 done! From SKYND’s unsettling true-crime theatre first thing in the morning to Sepultura’s tearful farewell and Lamb of God tearing the field apart, it’s been a lineup that swung between the brutal, the bizarre and the profound, within the space of a single afternoon. We’ve all involuntarily swallowed so much dust, our ears are ringing, and we’re looking forward to a nice sit-down, but looking ahead to even more madness in store for day two, we head to our tents already buzzing.

Click the image below to see more pictures from Bloodstock Open Air 2026 – Day One

Pressure? Pressure is for tyres! ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’ doesn’t buckle under it. It doesn’t even acknowledge it. It just gets on with being an excellent record. What’s immediately striking is how little the band seem interested in playing it safe. A lesser comeback would have chased the energy of ‘Move, Shake, Hide’ and called it a day. Instead, Marmozets have arrived as a leaner, stranger version of themselves. Four people rather than five, drawing from a weirder, wider pool of influence. There’s DNA here from post-punk’s jagged early days, from the jerky, irreverent spirit of Devo, to the swaggering weirdness of The Cramps. There are several moments on this record where Becca MacIntyre’s vocal has a dreamy, almost Siouxsie-esque quality. Their sound has evolved, but not so much that it’s not quintessentially Marmozets. 

A voice so distinctive and instantly recognisable is like being born with a third nipple. You either have it, or you don’t, and MacIntyre has it. Opener ‘A Kiss From A Mother’ wastes absolutely no time making that case. It’s tight, urgent, and sets the tone for an album that refuses to let you drift through its 11 tracks. ‘Cut Back’ is a force of nature. Relentless and immediate, it’s the kind of song that burns itself into your brain on that first listen and doesn’t look like it’s going to leave any time soon. ‘New York’ crackles with excited, spontaneous energy, capturing the feeling of a band rediscovering the joy of simply playing together in a room. It’s loose and alive in ways that expensive production often inadvertently kills.

‘You Want The Truth’ is perhaps the album’s most direct moment – the title alone tells you what you’re getting, and Becca delivers it with a confrontational clarity that feels both thrilling and galvanising. ‘Swear I’m Alive’ and ‘Running With The Sun In Your Eyes’ keep the momentum rolling in the album’s midsection, the latter swinging with a groove reminiscent of the early 2000s that sits in completely unexpected but brilliant territory. Even the more restrained moments pull their weight; ‘Mes Désirs’ adds texture and breathing space, while ‘Like Last Night’ has an almost nostalgic warmth to it that catches you off guard.

The album earns its ambitions in its quietest moments too. ‘Dandy’ strips everything back to something fragile and exposed, demonstrating a confidence that now extends beyond volume. Closer ‘Keep Going Darling’ is a slow-burn builder that takes its time before arriving somewhere moving – loops layering and shifting beneath MacIntyre’s vocal until the whole thing feels like it’s about to lift off. It’s a perfect closer in that it recontextualises everything before it.

Thematically, the record is unafraid to look outward. War, cowardice, the paralysis of watching a fractured world and wondering what one band from Yorkshire can actually do about any of it. The title itself, ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’, ties all of that into one anxious, playful knot. But the album never tips into despair. Its conclusion, and its whole emotional architecture, is stubbornly hopeful. That’s harder to pull off than fury, yet Marmozets do it with ease. It was a long wait but this comeback has more than made up for it.

KATHRYN EDWARDS

Delta Sleep arrive first and waste no time making a case for themselves. The Brighton math-rockers bring a kind of unhurried technical confidence that makes every track feel crowded and cascading in the best possible sense, jazz and alt influence bleeding into one another with an ease that makes the whole thing feel inevitable rather than effortful. The energy is quieter than Oversize’s; more focused, the kind of performance where the music does all the talking and the talking is very good. The crowd eat up every minute of it and by the time they’re done, a room that arrived strangers to them has been thoroughly won over.

And now, Hot Mulligan. ‘Moving to Bed Bug Island’ opens with deceptive calm, the kind of measured intro that lulls you into thinking you might get a minute to breathe before the whole thing detonates. You don’t. ‘And a Big Load’ follows and the Roundhouse barely knows what to do with itself, and from there the room is in freefall in the best possible way. Tades Sanville occupies a very specific Venn diagram overlap between genuinely funny and genuinely devastating, working the crowd between songs with the ease of someone who has been doing this in rooms this size long enough to know exactly when to land a punchline and when to let a song do the heavy lifting. The banter never outstays its welcome because the songs never let it.

A Weezer cover in ‘Island in the Sun’ arrives early and lands with a warmth that briefly turns the Roundhouse into a living room. Then ‘Monica Lewinskibidi’ and ‘How Do You Know It’s Not Armadillo Shells?’ (fan favourite and highlight of the set) instantly make the queuing all worth it. It’s a far cry from playing support slots to a couple of hundred people only a handful of years ago. ‘I Don’t Think It’s the Right Time for Emojis’ is barely three weeks old, a B-side broadside against religious hypocrisy that Tades has described with characteristic bluntness, and yet a startling number of this crowd already know every word. It’s just that kind of fanbase. ‘Featuring Mark Hoppus’ and ‘John “The Rock” Cena, Can You Smell What the Undertaker’ bulldozes through the mid-set with Hot Mulligan’s signature trick of disguising genuinely devastating emotional content inside song titles that sound like they were named by a sleep-deprived teenager on a group chat. ‘Drink Milk and Run’ and ‘Feal Like Crab’ keep the room in a state of near-constant motion, and ‘Gans Media Retro Games’ and ‘Stickers of Brian’ carry the main set toward its close with taut, hard-won momentum.

We’re transported back to the fever dream that was March 2020 with two tracks from ‘You’ll Be Fine’ for the encore. ’BCKYRD’ and ‘*Equip Sunglasses*’ close it out with the kind of volume that makes the Roundhouse’s famous circular walls feel like they’re leaning in.

Hot Mulligan are, and have been for a while, one of the best live bands doing it, and it feels like they are now, at last, getting their flowers.

KATHRYN EDWARDS

The night starts with Drug Church, whose blend of punky, post-hardcore-y, alt rock-y goodness shows they’re determined to earn their place on this bill. Frontman Patrick Kindlon has already declared to every crowd on this run that it’s the opening band’s job to set the tone, and set it they do. ‘Fun’s Over’ hits the O2’s cavernous space with a force that has no right to feel this intimate, and ‘Weed Pin’ sends the first wave of bodies over the barricade. Kindlon holds court between songs with the cadence of a man who has been given a pulpit and is absolutely going to use it. Drug Church give us neither the headliner’s sensuality nor the main support’s anarchic energy, but what they bring instead is something pricklier and more relentless. ‘Myopic’ and ‘Grubby’ deliver in ways that feel both urgent and oddly wise, and by the time they’re done, several thousand people who arrived as strangers to Drug Church are leaving as converts.

Denzel Curry takes to the stage wearing a balaclava-like snood and barely stops moving for the entirety of his set. Frankly, it’s a masterclass in how to occupy an arena stage as a solo rapper. The crowd naturally divides into two separate, invisible groups: Group A, ‘who the f*ck is this’, and Group B, ‘he’s an odd choice to support Deftones, but I’m having a fantastic time’. ’RICKY’ hits like a thunderclap and ‘GOATED’ follows with rhymes and confidence that match the song’s self-billing. DJ Poshtronaut adds crucial texture beside him as the pair bounce off each other in ways that keep the crowd perpetually on their toes. Curry’s ability to hold a crowd that’s ostensibly here for alt-metal is remarkable in and of itself, but a shout-out to Rage Against The Machine’s Zack De La Rocha before an absolutely scorching cover of ‘Bulls on Parade’ settles the question of whether he belongs on this bill (he does). Next, Deftones. Here we go!

‘Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)’ opens with the kind of slow-burn grandeur that renders the O2’s size irrelevant. Suddenly, this is the most intimate room in London, and Chino Moreno’s voice is doing things to the atmosphere that the projections and light rigs can only dream of. Speaking of which: the visuals form a striking backdrop of short looping clips that cycle behind the band, pulsing and breathing with the music. It is in fact so striking, it’s hard to look away, making it surprisingly easy to forget the people on stage creating all this noise, forcing the crowd to periodically correct the subject of their attention.

Chino is a man of remarkably few words, with “welcome”, ”thank you” and “you feeling good over there?”, being about the limit. The Deftones live experience offers an almost cult-like quality, a sense that the music is the sermon and additional commentary would only dilute it. ‘locked club’ and ‘Rocket Skates’ keep the temperature climbing, and ‘Diamond Eyes’ sends the first properly delirious surge through the crowd. The newer ‘Private Music’ cuts sit comfortably alongside the catalogue, as ‘ecdysis’ unfurls with that familiar gauzy menace, and ‘infinite source’ holds its own in a setlist that includes ‘Digital Bath’ and ‘Change (In the House of Flies)’ — no small feat.

Then, mid-intro to ‘my mind is a mountain’, Chino stops. Something’s happened in the crowd that appears to be a medical emergency. Chino handles it with quiet authority, waiting it out, watching, and only when the situation is resolved does the band ease back in. It briefly strips the theatre away from a gig and reminds you that these things happen in rooms full of people. They recover without missing a step. ‘Sextape’ drifts past like a fever dream, ‘Genesis’ rattles the chest cavity, and ‘milk of the madonna’ – bleeding into a ‘souvenir’ outro – feels like being slowly lowered into warm water, closing the main set with a kind of aching grace that leaves the room briefly speechless.

There’s something lovely happening tonight, as teenagers who’ve clearly arrived via TikTok’s recent and apparently insatiable appetite for Deftones stand beside the parents who’ve been listening to ‘Around the Fur’ since 1997. When ‘Cherry Waves’ opens the encore, the volume from the floor gets suspiciously, magnificently louder, and you can tell exactly which songs those newer fans came for. Nobody begrudges them for it. Mostly. ‘7 Words’ ends it all with the fury the night earned. Moreno screams, Carpenter’s guitar does something prehistoric to the air, and then it’s over. They walk off and leave the lights to do the talking. It’s more than enough.

Deftones return to the UK to headline All Points East presents Outbreak in August, and if tonight is anything to go by, whoever’s lucky enough to be in that field better be ready.

KATHRYN EDWARDS

Photo: Clemente Ruiz

Goo take to the stage earlier in the evening with the venue still filling up and the crowd holding back with that polite Saturday evening reservation that can plague support slots. West Yorkshire’s fuzzy indie-punks deserve better than this measured response too, but they don’t let it dim their attack. Vocalist Tanisha Badman and her bandmates throw everything they have at the room, determined to shake loose some energy from the swaying bodies. Their new single ‘Payday’ cuts through the chatter with those sunshine-saturated guitars and Tanisha’s vocals that nod to Courtney Barnett’s effortless cool, and for a moment the pints pause mid-sip as people actually pay attention. The band’s grunge-tinged alt-rock brings genuine energy, even when the crowd won’t quite meet them halfway. Tanisha graciously thanks “the mighty Marmozets” for having them before they exit. It’s a shame more people didn’t arrive earlier. Goo brought the fire, the crowd just wasn’t ready to catch it yet.

The atmosphere shifts entirely at 8:45pm when Becca Macintyre strolls onstage, looking cool as anything with her leopard print top catching the lights. Without fanfare, Marmozets tear into ‘A Kiss From A Mother’; their new single landing like a statement of intent. The gothy garage riffs twist around Becca’s voice as she unleashes that signature scream – a reminder of just how striking it is to hear the sheer force pouring from her throat. Within thirty seconds it’s clear the hiatus hasn’t dulled a single edge. The ceiling starts dripping condensation almost immediately, with bodies colliding and the venue transforming into exactly the kind of chaos Marmozets were born to create.

‘Play’ and ‘Weird and Wonderful’ demonstrate why they were called one of the UK’s most exciting live acts before they vanished. The math-rock rhythms stutter and surge while Sam Macintyre’s guitar playing carves jagged patterns through the mayhem. ‘Is It Horrible’ hits with visceral impact before ‘Particle’ showcases that peculiar Marmozets magic of pivoting from melodic to manic in a single bar. ‘You Want The Truth’ and ‘Habits’ continue to build momentum, with each song acting as a reminder of exactly what we’ve been missing. When Becca announces: “Here’s a dancing one”, before launching into ‘Running With The Sun In Your Eyes’, she’s not asking, she’s commanding. “Let’s see your dance moves; Saturday night,” she grins, and the room obliges with abandon.

‘Love You Good’ brings a brief moment of melodic breathing room before ‘Move, Shake, Hide’ sparks an inevitable mosh pit – bodies slamming with seven years of pent-up energy finally released. Sam’s confrontation with security over crowdsurfing becomes the defining moment of the night. “Kick me out as well then!” he shouts when security begin to eject crowdsurfers; the band refusing to let venue staff dampen the energy. “Do whatever you like, that’s the rule at our shows,” Becca declares, and the room erupts in approval.

It’s this defiant spirit that makes Marmozets more than just a band returning from hiatus. They’re a reminder of what live music is supposed to feel like, uninhibited and alive.

‘Cut Back’ and ‘Captivate You’ pull from the older material. They’re songs that feel like reuniting with old friends. Meanwhile, ‘New York’ demonstrates exactly what they’ve been cooking up during their time away (eccentric and unhinged in all the right ways). The one-two punch of ‘Why Do You Hate Me?’ followed by ‘Major System Error’ forms an encore that leaves the sweat-drenched crowd gasping, with the ceiling still dripping as Becca stands there grinning like someone who’s just remembered exactly who they are.

So the seven-year wait was worth it. Marmozets haven’t just survived their hiatus, they’ve returned stronger and more focused than ever. In this cramped Camden venue, with the ceiling dripping and security thoroughly told off, they proved that sometimes stepping away is exactly what you need to remember why you started. Welcome back.

KATHRYN EDWARDS