A good omen: Bad Omens retain their enigma while stoking the fires of expectation as they step-up to the big leagues at Louder Than Life.
Get this for a simile of Bad Omens’ current position: picture a stunt rider picking up speed as they prepare to jump a load of double-decker buses. Except they’ve kind of already done that, so the buses are a mile high and the speed is Mach 4. Such has been the ascent of the Richmond quartet over the past couple of years. Tonight, as they headline one of Louder Than Life’s two massive main stages, the next couple of years come into quite remarkable focus, and the promise they’ve already been delivering on properly kicks in like a cartoon fruit machine paying out.
Over recent weeks, the band have dropped new songs with no warning or comment, much less confirmation that their eagerly-awaited fourth album is next in the pipeline. Duh, that’s only made things more excitable around them. At Louder Than Life, duking it out with Deftones immediately after them, to a frankly impenetrable crowd, it would take an extreme and focused effort to fuck it up.
Never the most forthcoming of bands, the show is based more on atmosphere and ambience than personal showmanship. This is fine, because Noah Sebastian is an enigmatic fellow. While he does talk to the crowd, his main dispatches are done via arty videos between songs, in which he communicates via poetic prose. As a frontman, he’s not exactly cut from the same fast-talking, showboating fabric as Corey Taylor. But what Bad Omens deliver and deliver well is a more all-encompassing vibe, light and shade done to chonky electronic metalcore.
Opening with CONCRETE JUNGLE is a fine way to break jaws with their muscular heft. V.A.N. – sadly without a surprise guest spot from Poppy – shows what they can do with a thumping beat. THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND is stonkingly huge. The two new songs, Specter and Impose, both making their live debuts, sound like a band already working with this current reality in mind. Oh, and they basically announce closer Dethrone by setting the floor of the stage on fire.
Throughout, the show is cinematic in scope, one minute in near darkness, the next appearing as though on futuristic metal beams, or in a giant haunted mansion. For the latter track, the towering screens around the stage show footage of babbling water so that it looks as though drummer Nick Folio is actually adrift in the sea. At other points, cunning perspective makes it appear like they’re rushing down a red-lit corridor.
“I wanna see a mosh-pit,” requests Noah. “Or a wall of death – your choice.” He doesn’t scream this as, say, Robb Flynn, Oli Sykes or Matt Heafy might, barely breaking a sweat, but he gets it anyway. “Turn on your flashlights, I want to see how many people there are here.” The answer is: pretty much all of them.
If you saw them on tour with Bring Me The Horizon last year, you’ll know how trained for big stages like this Bad Omens are already. Though they’ve been frustratingly coy about what they’re up to next, it also makes tonight the next part of a big reveal. When they do unveil it all, expect this to become the norm.
