Live review: Bad Omens, Glasgow OVO Hydro

“I see a lot more floor space than is being used,” grins Noah Sebastian as proceedings come to a head with his army of fans on a chill Sunday night in Scotland. “So come on motherfuckers, move!”

Last time the Bad Omens frontman and his bandmates headlined North Of The Wall, they packed out Glasgow’s 700-cap Garage on February 27, 2023. Exactly 1,000 days later they're back to take command of the cavernous OVO Hydro – a room built to hold 20 times more than that show – and the atmosphere is so electric that it drowns out even the raucous rave happening at the old SEC next door. Having bypassed many rungs of the ladder, questions have persisted on whether they're able to so quickly scale up as arena headliners, but here they’re holding nothing back.

Tonight is a biggest-ever Scottish show for The Ghost Inside too, and the Californian veterans torpedo out of the gates as Avalanche crumbles spectacularly into The Great Unknown. Evidently, though, a silent majority of this crowd aren't familiar with their music. Sure, the slickness of songs like Wash It Away resonates, but unfortunately the vintage crunch of Going Under and Engine 45 gets a cold shoulder: a little too gritty, a touch too aggressively earnest to fully connect.

“Who just saw me trip over?” asks frontman Jonathan Vigil after throwing his all into a never more aptly titled Earn It. A chorus of jeers erupts from the tartan army. “Aw, haud yer wheesht!” he bats back. With one-legged drummer Andrew Tkaczyk an emblem of their indomitable spirit and crowdsurfers finally beginning to topple towards the stage, TGI reap the rewards of refusing anything less than victory. “If you know the words, sing along,” Jonathan goads anyone standing still as they blast towards throat-ripping closer Death Grip. “If you don't, just circle-pit.” It's good advice gladly taken.

Bilmuri swing in from the other end of the spectrum. Boasting jazz flute, sultry saxophone and a sound that combines a boatload of breezy, hip-swivelling pop-punk with occasional sledgehammer heaviness, it's impossible to be bored over the course of a firecracker 30-minute set. Just in case, mainman Johnny Franck also cranks the comedy, dedicating the throbbing BLINDSIDED to guitarist Reese Maslin's “addiction to Skyrim big-titty mods”, and schizoid highlight BOUTTA CASHEW to “busting the fattest nut”. A circus of sound and light, technically Bilmuri is Johnny's one-man project, but it's hard to imagine this as anything other than his wild ensemble of “weird guys” – multi-instrumentalist and co-singer Gabi Rise high-key the star of the show. An unhinged treat.

Emerging through a faint white light and a shin-high blanket of dry ice to begin Specter solo, Noah is a moodier, more sedate master of ceremonies. Fortunately, this set is crafted to his strengths.

Divided up into four sort-of chapters with abstract, Twin Peaks-style video interludes full of dreamlike visuals and mysterious messages played from an old tape recorder, there is a powerful sense of narrative flow. Impressively modernist production sees gorgeously curated visuals expand up across an ultra-widescreen backdrop and onto arrow-headed lighting rigs which mirror a pointy walkway at the front of the stage. A concussive Glass Houses sees pyro jets flame into life. THE DRAIN feels built for cathedral-sized sing-alongs, in the vein of recent tourmates Bring Me The Horizon. THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND is a grandiose early highlight, shapeshifting from spine-tingling solo sung sections to into overblown high drama like some alternate reality Bond theme.

Wheeling on through the 18-song setlist, the moments of bombast are more effective in the arena setting than those of atmospheric reflection. Limits, for instance, forces the whole arena to raise their voices but feels oddly lightweight compared to the gnarlier offerings on the menu. Left For Good, meanwhile, being played live for a second time ever, lands only a glancing blow with its first half but catches the room with a knockout on its second. Comparatively, the points where Noah’s bandmates more emphatically share the limelight are unequivocally thrilling. Guitarist Joakim Karlsson stepping up with the massive riff on ARTIFICIAL SUICIDE legitimately raises goosebumps. Then a turbocharged V.A.N. underlines the point that everyone is plugged-in and cranked up.

The vast audience respond in kind. A moment where one punter is stood on friends’ shoulders screaming along face to face with Noah for the first half of Concrete Jungle, only to be blown away by the ferocious second, is truly awesome. Seeing separate sides of the crowd slam into each other in an affirmatively crunchy “wall of life” during Nowhere To Go drops more than a few jaws, too.

This is still just the beginning for Bad Omens. In a rare address to the audience, Noah looks forward to finally crashing Download Festival next summer, damn close to the top of the bill. “That's going to be fun!"

If tonight is anything to go by, they’ll keep doing it on their own intriguing terms. Ending the main set, an aching Impose feels weirdly unimpactful, lost in the wafts of confetti. But then they come back to blow everyone away with a gnashing Dethrone, wreathed in flames. ‘Here am I, take me to the pearly gates,’ Noah sings, down on his knees at the very end. There’s no need to beg – he’s already in heavy Heaven.

Bad Omens are on tour in the UK until November 29.

Read this next:

• Bad Omens: “We’re not going to do anything to compromise this”
• Bad Omens: “Most stuff people in our space are doing is kind of boring… I want to challenge myself and struggle when I create”
• Bilmuri: “I’ll be writing music the same way when I’m 50 years old. It’s the greatest adventure”