Live Review: Against The Current - The Garage, London 10/03/2026
Against the Current at the Garage tear up their setlist and add some old favourites back in for a rejuvenating 15-year anniversary as a band that are about to enter a new chapter.
It’s like they’ve never been away. Popularised by the Legends Never Die song in League of Legends and their talent + hard work ethic, Against the Current have endured fifteen years as a band. They’re not young anymore, only the drummer is still in his twenties, but they never felt so good – teasing new material, making the most out of a short set that started at 8pm and was done by 9. This – is, as frontwoman Chrissy Costanza says, is a long set for them – but it’s not wasted, every moment is delightful and the Poughkeepsie outfit benefit from their online following at the dawn of 2011 that grew and grew fast due to covers of popular songs. Their own music is no slouch too, and that’s what the fans are here to see.
It takes a little while for a mosh pit to get going as there is no support and we are straight in. But when it comes the crowd are moving and flowing and engaged; the packed-out Garage adoring the setlist and singing along to every word. “You say you adore me / but your eyes tell a story I’ve heard before” Talk kicks into gear, poking fun at the male stereotype of the all-talk, no commitment issue that people are familiar with if they’ve been long enough in the game.
It gets the crowd on board instantly. “good guy”, Paralyzed, Running with the wild Things gets a run out, this is Against the Current they are, even fifteen years in, still very much wild things, taking the time to recognise that they’re not natives but they have come to develop a deep love of iconic British chains like Greggs and Wetherspoons. The crowd are bouncy at this stage and starting to ramp up a gear – come Wasteland everything is firing on all cylinders in the mosh and on the stage!
The band at this point in their career are finding new ways to push themselves sonically and even take some time to tease the audience promising new material: this is the first run through of the band’s setlist so you aren’t getting much more. This is the band dipping into the In Our Bones part of the gig, Constanza’s charisma unparalleled. The pop-punk ballads lie Running with the Wild Things and Blood Like Gasoline are evident here; as apposed to the poppier tracks of Demons and Brighter, both absent – this is a setlist curated with the pop-punk heads in mind and this is very much a pop-punk crowd.
This is a fifteen-year anniversary as a band; so expect a deep dive into their past and their history here, how they came about as a band band storytelling, ever thankful for their YouTube sensation popularity boost in the early days. Fever gets served the best of with five tracks deployed, but there’s plenty for fans of Gravity and In Our Bones. A large portion of Against the Current fans have been there from the very start and you can see with this consistent output why they’ve stayed around for so long – Costanza’s energy on stage is electric, rawer than their studio record, deeper as well, aided by Will Ferri’s drums and Dan Gow on lead guitar – making use of the Garage’s excellent sound-system.
In the back end of the set, we get a few quieter songs. Quiet being the watchword here as acoustic renditions of Infinity and Fireproof are still loud, and that’s not long before doubling down with Outsiders, a song that you’ve not seen for a long time and fans haven’t seen played in a non-acoustic way since 2018. It’s a triumphant return for a track fans have been begging for, incredibly well accepted by an audience that believe, like the lyrics; are “misfits, rebels, creeps and freaks,” and it’s impossible not to be drawn under their spell. Intimate shows are where Against the Current shine at their best – having wowed a similarly completely engaged crowd at Lafayette in 2024, and just like it was then; history repeats itself – their fans are queuing long before doors open.
It’s Against the Current, so of course we get Legends Never Die here and many of the audience have indeed, found this band from League of Legends itself. It’s deployed as part of Costanza’s three favourite songs to play live so she commands the crowd to get their energy and blood pumping from the word go: Wildfire, Legends Never Die and set-closer weapon (there is no pretence of an encore here). The crowd go-up for this one-by-one and you get a rolling conveyor belt of surfers testing security; and those fans who were camped at the barricade, to the limit. It’s a hell of a way to end a gig – and Against the Current oblige those whose support has kept them going as a band for fifteen years. Hopefully they’re back at the Garage on a break from stadium tours (which, let’s be real, is the level they should be at) for their thirtieth.
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
Photography provided by James Kirkland
