{"id":304054,"date":"2025-11-24T16:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T16:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304054\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T16:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T16:12:08","slug":"bad-omens-review-anthemic-songs-and-pillars-of-fire-dampened-by-arena-nerves-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304054\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Omens review \u2013 anthemic songs and pillars of fire dampened by arena nerves | Metal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melodic metalcore band Bad Omens are pulling out all the stops for their first UK arena headline tour. In the first five minutes, we\u2019ve experienced huge riffs, pillars of fire and supernatural horror-inspired visuals. Formed in 2015, the US band found mainstream success in 2022 with their third album The Death of Peace of Mind, which embraced the kind of hooky pop songwriting and complex storytelling that made the band irresistible on TikTok. Although their fourth studio album is yet to be released, this tour represents their graduation to the same league as genre titans Bring Me the Horizon<\/a>, who they supported last year. Opener Specter is enough to justify this step up: an anthemic recent single as atmospheric as the dry ice crawling around frontman Noah Sebastian.<\/p>\n

Although tonight\u2019s set list is rooted in metal, it showcases the band\u2019s ambitions towards other genres, incorporating elements of industrial, electronica and drum\u2019n\u2019bass. This fluid approach is anchored by Sebastian\u2019s supremely adaptable vocals, which switch from croon to scream to whisper, even deftly mimicking the flow of metal princess Poppy during their collaborative single VAN. Dying to Love is pleasingly gothic, Nowhere to Go is relatively perky pop punk, and Impose finds commonality between breakbeats and double-kick metal drums. Drummer Nick Folio deserves a particular mention for balancing visceral crunch with expansive resonance. The band\u2019s willingness to lean into zeitgeisty pop sounds is key to their mainstream appeal: The Death of Peace of Mind is reminiscent of the gloomy R&B of the Weeknd, by way of Bring Me the Horizon \u2013 all falsetto and moody beats with heavy metal drops.<\/p>\n

Pulling out the stops \u2026 Bad Omens\u2019s stage show. Photograph: PR IMAGE<\/p>\n

This unabashedly big sound and anthemic songwriting is well suited to arenas \u2013 but Bad Omens themselves are not, at least not yet. They\u2019re more like consummate professionals playing a good reproduction of what\u2019s already on record; it might be big-venue nerves, or how spread out they are, but there\u2019s a lack of connection on stage, like a star and his backing band rather than a group with chemistry. And a reluctant star at that: when Sebastian asks the audience if they\u2019re having fun, he doesn\u2019t seem to be having that much of it himself.<\/p>\n

At Alexandra Palace, London<\/a>, 26 November; then touring.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melodic metalcore band Bad Omens are pulling out all the stops for their first UK arena headline tour.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-304054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}