Live Review: RØRY - O2 Kentish Town Forum, London 06/03/2025
You don’t come to RØRY shows to have a good time, and fans of her music will know this by now. You come to her gigs to have your heart broken over and over again, an emotional catharsis, and that’s what she delivered on in a packed night at the 02 Kentish Town.
Her journey was chronicled for us all – her journey from her past demons to sobriety and therapy – coming to terms with the loss of her mum due to cancer ten years ago and her coping mechanisms, for a raw, intimiate and personal saga. RØRY, this is the start of your story.
It’s a hell of a setlist that speaks to the mental health of everyone in the room and the campaigner for ADHD awareness really is able to make her voice heard in the right way – for the gig it was instantly comforting to learn that thousands of people are going through the same issues and have all lost someone, and you’re not alone – struggles can be incredibly hard on the best of people and almost certainly anyone you know is struggling. It’s in this space that RØRY operates – coming onto her stage to the In the Bible, the brand-spanking new song from hit album Restoration, her fandom adores her and within just a few seconds it’s easy to see why. The singer-songwriter is a late bloomer in the music industry, never having believed she had a music career at 37 and the fact that she’s able to have broken out with everything in her past and deal with it in a healthy way is a titanic recovery story of success.
First agenda for RØRY is to thank the support acts for their performances – and what brilliant support acts we have. I wasn’t able to get down to the venue in time for opening act, Campbell King, but Lake Malice delivered with a fury of screams, full throttle rifffs and heavy lyrics to accompany the heavy music, all sorts of fusion of hyper-pop and metal for a fantastic style. Alice’s metal screams are triumphant and the crowd were instantly into it – Bloodbath and Mitsuko the highlights and it’s easy to see why they’re the band’s most streamed songs on spotify – they’re that good. Their new single Scatterbrain is desperate and frustrated, but in a good way – they’re taking out their anger and make an instant impression. Influenced by anime and manga they found a lot of support from the fans as there is a significant overlap between the two fandoms – and the style of Alice Guala and Blake Cornwall is emotionally effective. We even had time for a conga mosh pit, safe and inclusive to the last.
Then came As December Falls – the big one – described as RØRY’s band – hailing from Nottingham, a band who suffer from the unfortunate decision to not really have formed a decade earlier – were they around in the 2000s, they’d be deservingly much bigger than they are now. But such is the sheer volume of acts around these days it’s easy to let As December Falls slip under your radar – but rest not, if it’s your first time seeing them – like it was for me, even if the majority were already converted, you’ll be a fan by the end of the night. Bethany Hunter ate up the pop-punk lyrics of As December Falls, and it’s hard not to love a heavy song that encourages moshing by using airplane announcer instructions, in a similar way to Siamese’s This is Not a Song.
They follow in the footsteps of Siamese to play at Radar Festival in the summer – but hopefully, unlike Siamese, won’t drop out. For those in the moment they got treated to a real humdinger of a show - promoting their new album Everything’s On Fire But I’m Fine, due in August – teasing early songs like Therapy and the title track. It’s billed as the most daring venture from the band yet – “straight from the undercity in Arcane” Bethany Curtis promises; and it really delivers, instantly appealing to fans of the Netflix TV series, of which again – there was a significant overlap in the audience. Now three, nearly four albums deep – they had plenty of material to draw from but their setlist almost felt too short for my tastes, and could’ve been longer were it not for the strict 11PM curfew.
And then it was time for the main event – RØRY herself. The crowd shout impatiently for her to come on stage and they’re met with a reward, with Kentish Town turned into a gigantic group therapy session for the night. She comes straight in swinging – and it’s clear for all bands involved it’s an emotional night, every one stops to take photos of their beloved audience – and they couldn’t be more thankful for their fans for turning up. RØRY knows how to get the crowd going – In the Bible earns multiple singalongs for its real, honest and true lyrics that feel deeply personal for the singer-songwriter – and she brings the vibes down instantly after the fun pop punk emo vibes of As December Falls. But it’s all good, it’s what the fans are here for – after all, if you came to have fun at a RØRY show you came to the wrong place.
The nu-generation of RØRY draws its origins from 2022, having been active in the music industry long before that. The experience and the savvy nature of her career helps her engage with the current trends and it helps that the personal nature of the album feels so real and honest throughout, which is felt by what she does on stage – she brings out Bethany Curtis for a duet of My Funeral Song, and encourages the audience to hold their phone torches up in the air for Jesus & John Lennon, confessing to her sins – “heaven was made for people like you,” she says – not her. It takes an emotional soul to bill herself as one of life’s all time losers in front of a stage of 2,000 people – and she thanks every one of them for being there. The 37 club on Facebook are given a shout out, and she brings out her current partner on stage for a feel-good, thank you moment. And the fans are along for the ride at every turn. It’s as much a therapy session as it is a gig – but this is only a good thing, a rich success story against all odds – you feel an instant connection with the live songs that feel best experienced live, much moreso than on the album.
Her skills as a singer/songwriter come to fruition here – she’s written for You Me at Six in the past and uses her experience to connect with the audience and earn her devoted fanbase from the word go. She works hard to stay in tune with the audience and even has the ability to interact with the audience in ways that most artists just don’t – telling them to look around at each other when she asks who’s lost a loved one or who is going through hell, and to remind them that they’re not alone. Whether you’re just there for the music or not, it’s all vital to someone.
Her acoustic renditions of One Drink Away, climbing the balcony stairs in Kentish Town to do so despite a reluctant security team, allowed for an intimate backdrop for RØRY to highlight a long journey to sobriety and how it’s never just “two drinks” for anyone struggling with addiction. She talks about being “only one drink away from 2.a.m. mistakes, threesomes where I don’t feel that safe, four dealers rung, five years undone” and how it’s never a simple straightforward road to recovery. It’s lyrics that will resonate with just about anyone in recovery – and it’s a powerful, hard-hitting song that ensures this Restoration tour is just so damn memorable. if pain could talk, what would it say? is another early highlight of the evening that made full use of the curfew and instantly thankful for the reopening of Kentish Town Station – and her triumphant success ensured that nobody was leaving early from that show. Few can interact with their fans better and few can deliver on emotional lyrics better than RØRY and after a live experience you’ll never truly be the same again. Essential.
Photography by Sam Strutt
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
