Melodic metalcore band Bad Omens are pulling out all the stops for their first UK arena headline tour. In the first five minutes, we’ve experienced huge riffs, pillars of fire and supernatural horror-inspired visuals. Formed in 2015, the US band found mainstream success in 2022 with their third album The Death of Peace of Mind, which embraced the kind of hooky pop songwriting and complex storytelling that made the band irresistible on TikTok. Although their fourth studio album is yet to be released, this tour represents their graduation to the same league as genre titans Bring Me the Horizon, who they supported last year. Opener Specter is enough to justify this step up: an anthemic recent single as atmospheric as the dry ice crawling around frontman Noah Sebastian.
Although tonight’s set list is rooted in metal, it showcases the band’s ambitions towards other genres, incorporating elements of industrial, electronica and drum’n’bass. This fluid approach is anchored by Sebastian’s supremely adaptable vocals, which switch from croon to scream to whisper, even deftly mimicking the flow of metal princess Poppy during their collaborative single VAN. Dying to Love is pleasingly gothic, Nowhere to Go is relatively perky pop punk, and Impose finds commonality between breakbeats and double-kick metal drums. Drummer Nick Folio deserves a particular mention for balancing visceral crunch with expansive resonance. The band’s willingness to lean into zeitgeisty pop sounds is key to their mainstream appeal: The Death of Peace of Mind is reminiscent of the gloomy R&B of the Weeknd, by way of Bring Me the Horizon – all falsetto and moody beats with heavy metal drops.
This unabashedly big sound and anthemic songwriting is well suited to arenas – but Bad Omens themselves are not, at least not yet. They’re more like consummate professionals playing a good reproduction of what’s already on record; it might be big-venue nerves, or how spread out they are, but there’s a lack of connection on stage, like a star and his backing band rather than a group with chemistry. And a reluctant star at that: when Sebastian asks the audience if they’re having fun, he doesn’t seem to be having that much of it himself.
• At Alexandra Palace, London, 26 November; then touring.
