Live Review: Fightstar - OVO Wembley Arena, London 22/03/2024
With Loathe and Twin Atlantic supporting, Charlie Simpson and co. finally returned to the London stage in celebration of Fightstar’s 20th Birthday. One monumental night later, though, and there’s one question on everyone’s mind: are Fightstar back? Or are they back?
The year is 2015. Jeremy Clarkson has just left Top Gear. Donald Trump announces his intentions to run for presidential candidacy in America. David Cameron and the Conservatives have won the UK general election for the first time since 1997. And, of course, the world lost the passionate, post-hardcore spark of Fightstar.
Now, fast forward to 2024. Jeremy Clarkson… owns a farm? Donald Trump’s running for presidency again — if he can pay the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of legal fees anyway. Somehow, the Conservatives are still clinging on? It’s 2015, but somehow worse.
And yet, Friday March 22nd saw at least one undoubtedly good thing: even for just one night, Fightstar were back. Supported by Loathe and Twin Atlantic, OVO Wembley saw thousands of fans, flying in from all over the globe, flock to London for the band’s long-awaited return; one big ol’, 12,500 capacity headline show in celebration of their twentieth birthday, supported by the dual powerhouses of Loathe and Twin Atlantic.
Loathe haven’t really released any music since 2020’s ‘I Let It in and It Took Everything’. Sure, there’s been the odd single, or 2021’s ambient instrumental album ‘The Things They Believe’; in terms of tracks to play live though, they’ve been rather silent.
And yet, as far as laurels go, ‘I Let It in…’, is one hell of an album to rest upon, and support slots over the past few years with While She Sleeps, Architects, Periphery, Spiritbox and now Fightstar, along with a string of festival appearances and sold out headline shows, show a band nowhere close to tailing off.
With a mix of Kadeem’s guttural roars and the band’s more universal trancelike, shoegaze sound, Loathe’s presence — both musically and physically — is always a sight to behold. For Friday, though, Loathe took it up a notch. Kadeem, rocking a fresh buzzcut, was as on point as ever and more so; his ferocious screams as good as London had likely every heard them —though it can still be jarring hearing the soft, scouse lilt of his speaking voice after his spine-tingling growls.
Wembley was treated to the best of what Loathe had to offer, even with such a short time on stage; from the blistering ‘Gored’, or the deafening blast beats of ‘Heavy Is the Head…’, to the always emotional ‘Is It Really You?’, Loathe truly outdid themselves.
If Loathe were the heavy side of Fightstar, Twin Atlantic provided the gentler, sing-along counterpart. As one of the first opportunities for fans to witness the new era of Twin Atlantic, before their November headline tour, the crowd was in good spirits — and rightly so. With latest singles ‘World Class Entertainment’ and ‘Asleep’ opening proceedings, the crowd quickly got the opportunity to let loose and sing along, while giving Twin Atlantic another well-deserved Wembley arena showing. The only issue, though, was the lack of familiarity with the tracks. As the only tracks all night released in the four years prior, they seemed to slightly miss the mark in drawing the crowd in; that is, however, until third track ‘Free’. The sudden influx of singing from the crowd breathed life into the set, which only continued with ‘Make A Beast Of Myself’, or particularly with closer ‘Heart and Soul’.
Although at first they might have felt a little strange slotted between the Deftones-esque, auditory destruction of Loathe, and the nostalgia-tinged, metallic excellence of Fightstar, Twin Atlantic’s set held its own remarkably.
It’s strange going to a gig and having absolutely no idea what the setlist will look like. There are a few guarantees of course — ‘Paint Your Target’ was always going to be there, and the crowd would have probably rioted if ‘Palahniuk’s Laughter’ wasn’t played — but a nine-year gap, into a one-off show, means everything else was up for grabs. Even the music videos shared on the band’s social pages on the run up to the gig turned out to be red herrings of sorts, with some of the ones being teased not ending up on the list. Nothing was certain. Yet, in a way, that also meant that anything was possible. And, no matter the distance, people from all over the globe were ready; whether it meant a ten-hour drive down from Scotland, or flying in from Texas, nothing could stop Fightstar’s fans from being there to experience it all.
And, for those passionate fans, it was nothing short of perfect.
There were rarities; even for a band that hasn’t played since 2015, ‘Until Then’ hasn’t been seen from the band since 2009, according to setlist.fm. There were fan requests, by way of a heartbreaking, acoustic rendition of the Radiohead-esque ‘Amethyst’. Wembley even got to see Charlie Simpson’s ‘favourite song of all time’, as the band covered the mighty ‘Hurt’, their version falling somewhere between Trent’s angst-fuelled pain and Johnny Cash’s wistful, poignant fragility — a track which had only been previously played at Fightstar’s very first shows. There were pits and crowd surfers galore, although of course 2024 had a much greater sea of upraised phones recording throughout than Fightstar would have seen back in 2015. There were familiar faces: bassist Dan Haigh seemed unduly surprised at just how many he could make out looking up at it from the barrier, as if only then realising how much Fightstar meant to some people. There were jets of flame, explosions of steam. There was even some theatre, with the light rigging towering over the band looking like some malicious, metal monstrosity, straight out of some desolate, dystopian disaster.
But more than anything else, the night seemed to mostly just be about families. There was the literal, with Will Simpson helping his brother out on stage, or fan-favourite ‘Sink With The Snakes’ being dedicated to Charlie’s son Arlo. There was the professional, with Alex Westaway saying that the four hadn’t seen each other for eight odd years, but that with everything they’d gone through together, they’d always feel like family.
But there was also just the Fightstar community. For a band that haven’t played or released music in nine years to garner such a monumental response from their fans shows just how much the band meant to them, and you could see just how much that, in turn, meant to the band. If that isn’t a family born out of love, it’s hard to know what is. Whether screaming along to 'War Machine' or 'Deathcar', or crying along to 'Mono', the adoration was palpable.
A milestone of a night, and hopefully just the start of the return of a criminally underrated band — although, if that really was the end once again, it was a hell of a show to re-bow out on.
Words by James O’Sullivan
Photography by Connor Mason
