A blanket of dry ice lingers low over the stage. A single illuminated figure — Noah Sebastian — stands wordless in a pale wash of white light. A tape recorder crackles. The show begins not as a concert, but as a film.
Bad Omens’ first-ever UK arena headline tour is their most ambitious leap yet: a full-scale cinematic re-imagining of their catalogue, staged like a live narrative experience in four distinct chapters, each separated by short-film interludes — abstract, dreamlike, “Twin Peaks-style” fragments that serve as transitions and world-building rather than mere theatrics.
These visuals, projected across an ultra-wide backdrop and mirrored on towering, arrow-headed lighting rigs, create a sense of architecture — jagged lines of light echoing the pointed runway that juts into the crowd. The mood is supernatural, unsettling, as if we’ve stepped into the internal universe of The Death of Peace of Mind — a place built from neon dread, smoky isolation, psychological horror, and slow-blinking warning lights.
Glass Houses erupts into the first communal release of the night. The crowd surges; the film becomes physical.
The band’s ability to capture scale is clearest during their most anthemic material: THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND is a towering highlight, starting as a haunted whisper and transforming into something akin to a metal James Bond theme gone beautifully feral.
Drummer Nick Folio deserves special credit here — his performance balances punishing impact with cinematic resonance, anchoring the band’s genre-hopping ambitions.
The show quickly escalates — riffs detonate, pyro erupts in pillars of fire and concussive flame jets. And yet, beneath the bombast, there is restraint in Sebastian’s performance. He stalks the space like a character trapped in his own narrative — more noir protagonist than swaggering metal frontman.
Musically, the band glide between their catalogue with studied confidence: metalcore crunch, industrial menace, dance-influenced grooves, even textures of electronica. Noah’s voice hypnotically moves from silken croon to serrated scream to fragile whisper — as adaptable as the shifting score around him.
At times, though, the spectacle threatened to overwhelm. But when it worked — when the lights, the visuals, the music and the crowd aligned — the show soared. There were genuine goosebump moments, such as when guitarist Joakim Karlsson stepped forward for ARTIFICIAL SUICIDE, delivering a massive riff that felt primal — like a ritual, or a sacrifice under neon skies. Later, during V.A.N., the band melded electronic pulse and metal groove, driving the crowd into a collective trance of head-bangs and raised fists. At those times it felt as though the arena had transformed into a cathartic cathedral, where sound and light became religion.
At the end of the night, when the final notes of Dethrone blazed under roaring flames and Noah dropped to his knees, screaming toward the ceiling “Here am I, take me to the pearly gates,” the fire died. The lights faded. The mist cleared. What remained wasn’t a band standing on a stage — but a world, shaken, built, and then dissolved. You left the Hydro not just buzzed from heavy breakdowns, but haunted by images, sounds and half-understood messages.
For a band still relatively new to arenas, this was as bold and raw as every crafted note. It felt as close as a live show can get to being a film. And, like the best films, it left you wanting to rewind — to catch what you missed, to piece together the fragments, to feel every emotion and hear every word for the first time all over again.
You can catch Bad Omens on tour here.
