By Jase Walker
Every now and then you get a tour that creates a pretty massive buzz amongst people in my social circle and none has quite done that other than Sleep Token in recent memory and now Bad Omens. Alongside a pretty mental increase in venue size on almost every date of the ÜK tour – in Manchester’s case jumping from Rebellion to the Ritz (roughly 400 to 1500) – they also subsequently sold out every venue in less than a few hours… mental.
Along for this pretty lengthy tour that’s set to finish up in the ÜK is Oxymorrons and GHØSTKID who I’m a bit familiar with and is an interesting sounding artist to say the least! Bloody early doors of 6:30pm saw me making a mad dash across Manchester to my apartment to drop my work stuff off before back into the centre, ramming a McDonald’s down my neck and getting into the queue so I don’t miss the first act.
As it turns out my rush to get to the venue might have been a bit misjudged as Oxymorrons have only just started at 7:30pm, oh well. I did not expect a dual hip-hop/rap fronted metal/punk act though, so this is quite a pleasant surprise! The backing music to supplement the two-piece backing band of drums and guitar is pretty quiet though unfortunately which hurts the overall experience a bit though. Their guitarist pulls some tricks out that remind me very heavily of Rage’s Tom Morello with the use of pitch bender pedals which works really well for this sort of music.
The two front men are absolute bundles of energy though, they’ve not stopped moving except for brief moments to talk to the audience between songs. Pretty interesting origin story about the interaction between them and the German band who held the name “Oxymorons” though: smart move by them changing the name enough to not get caught out. Great opener for tonight!
GHØSTKID opens the set with a bouncy German techno number before the band properly gets on stage. It’s time for some riffy, screamy, synth infused metalcore and it’s great seeing that it’s translating well to a live show as well. The backing track is a little quiet still which is a little frustrating because of how much it adds to the music, hopefully this isn’t the case for Bad Omens later.
Annoyingly that trope of kneeling down and jumping back up comes in really early on and I’m getting a bit bored of it now. Other than the quiet backing track, it’s still sounding pretty decent and their really groovy style works super well. I’m glad a bit further along in the set we get more of the stuff that leans more heavily on an industrial kind of sound which is what I’m more familiar with. At some points it occurs to me how much this sound reminds me of Northlane, with its use of uplifting vocal melodies and then leading into crushingly heavy guitar breaks.
Germany is producing some really interesting bands right now that are really pushing boundaries and fusing genres and ending up with interesting results and GHØSTKID is one of them! It’s noticeable how much louder the backing tracks are by this point and it’s making this whole set really shine and judging by the amount of phones going up to take quick videos, it’s catching the attention of the audience as well. It’s also a privilege to be amongst the first to see these play in the UK, it’s a pretty fantastic show and they’ve definitely got themselves a ton of new fans tonight, great set.
Bad Omens begins with a video saturated in red with what appears to be a propaganda piece before they take the stage and lead the set with ‘Concrete Jungle’, and the crowds wasting no time in surging past to the centre and going wild! The singer donning the same mask as the person in the video as they start ‘Artificial Suicide’ and we are fully in the swing of the show already! ‘Glass Houses’ sees the crowd amp it up even further in response to the band, the ground shakes beneath my feet under the weight of the entire crowd jumping up and down and over the top comes a flood of crowd surfers. It’s quite hard to overstate just how much feedback they’re getting off everyone here, from the front of the stage to the balcony, everyone is throwing their arms around and screaming the words back, it’s truly quite something.
Admittedly I don’t quite engage as well with their more chilled tracks, they sound great don’t get me wrong but I generally prefer my metalcore gigs to really keep a solid pace going. They bring it back up to speed with ‘Limits’ which seems to properly rouse everyone back up again, especially when it comes to the chorus! Just looking around at the reactions of everyone here is engrossing, seeing the dedicated and enthralled fanbase that Bad Omens has built up that’s led to packing out a venue like this. On top of this Bad Omens have sounded outrageously good for the whole show as well, every part of the band is crystal clear and managed to avoid this current trend of booming drums and barely audible guitar that’s plagued other shows.
And finally, the encore to wrap up a brilliant show, starting with ‘The Death Of Peace Of Mind’, the amount of phones up above people’s heads to record this is pretty crazy. And to finish, blasting through two massive bangers of ‘Dethrone’ and ‘What Do You Want From Me?’ just to squeeze out those last drops of manic energy from the crowd and they’re going to bloody get it. I don’t think the Ritz knew what hit it tonight! 2023 is still going strong… let’s see what March has to offer!
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