Live Review: Of Monsters and Men - Roundhouse, London 18/02/2026
Of Monsters and Men mesmerise the Roundhouse.
Opening for Of Monsters and Men, fellow Icelandic singer Arny Margret provides a perfect support on their second sold out night at the Roundhouse, a venue that couldn’t be more ideally suited to the indie folk band’s anthemic sound. A perfect antidote to the incessant rain, Arny’s meandering vocals flow mellifluously, leaving the crowd in a state of calm contemplation that feels apt given the Scandinavian reputation for uber cool composure. Raised in the sedate Westfjords of Iceland, her serene lyrics and wry observations delight the crowd who are already clearly hyped for the occasion. The title of her first full length release ‘They Only Talk About The Weather’ feels quite poignant in the capital tonight, as we can’t stop talking about the wettest month on record.
Born in Ísafjörður, Margret’s music reflects the stillness of her Westfjords upbringing. Drawing from ‘They Only Talk About the Weather’ and her latest release ‘I Miss You, I Do’ she delivered a set built on soft vocals, gentle guitar and unhurried melodies. There was no attempt to overwhelm the space, instead standing alone on the stage she leant into simplicity. Her lyrics on distance, longing and reflection landed with quiet clarity. It was a confident, restrained opening: subtle rather than showy, but all the more affecting for it.
After some six years away from the live stage, this show marks an emphatic return for Of Monsters and Men who show no rustiness despite their lengthy hiatus, a mark of their sheer musicianship. With their eery, ethereal entrance, the band create quite a furore. With expert deadline delivery, the singer quips as he introduces a song: “Who really cares what a song is about? My dad bought me a dog years ago? Who cares? Just play the song!”, provoking a roar of laughter from the crowd that sets the laid back tone for the evening perfectly.
In the cavernous yet intimate confines of Camden’s Roundhouse, Of Monsters and Men proved that even after more than a decade on the international stage, they remain masters of scale, capable of turning hushed introspection into thunderous communal release within a single song. Formed in Reykjavík, the band first broke through with 2011’s ‘Little Talks’, a track that still functions as both calling card and emotional detonator. When its unmistakable horn line rang out mid-set, the crowd, voices rising to meet Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson in a euphoric call-and-response.
Yet this tour is anchored not in nostalgia, but renewal. Their latest album, ‘All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade’ marks their first full-length release in six years and finds the band delving further into textured indie rock. The folk-inflected exuberance of ‘My Head Is an Animal’ has long since given way to the intensity first explored on ‘Beneath the Skin’ and refined on ‘Fever Dream’. At the Roundhouse, those sonic evolutions felt deliberate rather than divergent, a band developing without losing its emotional core.
Material from ‘All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade’ introduced a deeper, more contemplative register to the evening. Where earlier hits are built on buoyant rhythms and festival-sized crescendos, the newer songs are layered, brooding and patient. The arrangements unfurled slowly, with Hilmarsdóttir’s voice often carrying a fragile intensity that hovered over swelling instrumentation. In a venue known for its enveloping acoustics, these quieter tensions resonated as strongly as the anthems.
Visually, the performance was marked by silhouette and shadow, wrapping the audience in sound and turning even restrained moments into something communal, their music feeling almost transcendental in its power to move everyone into a palpable state of euphoria.
An ode to immer strength and bravery, ‘King and Lionheart’ : ‘And in the sea that's painted black/ Creatures lurk below the deck’, the words seemingly alluding to a darker force of nature yet sung with contrastingly upbeat vocals. At the halfway point and by now well into the momentum of their high energy set, Of Monsters and Men play ‘Empire’, a song with such visceral imagery in its poetic lyricism such the opening lines: ‘Feel the oceans as it breathes/ Shivering teeth/ See the mountains where they are meet/ Smothering me’ stirring the soul with their gloriously raw simplicity. The vocal duet of the chorus drives the song and has the hugely interactive crowd singing every word back in beautiful harmony.
Tonight, the majestic Of Monsters and Men are no longer simply the purveyors of early-2010s indie-folk exuberance. They are a band comfortable in contrast balancing the celebratory rush of ‘Little Talks’ with the emotional complexity of their newer work, delighting fans with their versatility. At the Roundhouse, that balance felt complete: reflective without being distant, expansive without losing intimacy, a superb performance from a band at their peak.
Words by Brendan Sharp
Photo Credit: ‘photos by Martin’
