Photo Credit: Bryan Kirks
American metalcore band Bad Omens performed at 013 in Tilburg on the 4th of February as part of their Concrete Forever European tour. The tour, of which the title is taken from Concrete Jungle, a track on the band’s album The Death of Peace of Mind, has already crossed the entirety of Germany prior to this stop in the Netherlands.
Doors to the venue opened at 19:00 after people who had gotten the VIP package had made it into the hall. A capacity of 3000 people is not necessarily a huge amount, but the room was packed to the brim with fans eagerly awaiting the night’s event. At 20:00, support act Poppy took to the stage to warm the audience up, opening with her hit ‘BLOODMONEY’. Wearing a soft pink mini dress and knee high socks with bows reminiscent of her ‘Church Outfit’ in the music video, Poppy and her music very much stood out against all of the fans dressed in black. While the singer can definitely scream, a lot of her music is more pop-infused. Nonetheless, there were quite some fans of hers in the crowd, belting along to her lyrics, head banging, and clapping along to the beat of songs such as ‘Sit / Stay’. The most iconic moment of the night was when she bit into an apple only to throw it into the audience right after. Furthermore, Poppy did not interact with the crowd too much which is understandable to those familiar with her AI characteristics. The only exception was when she motioned for the crowd to wave from side to side. Speaking of AI, there were several short voice-over interludes where chants such as “it just keeps going and going and going” and “I love you so much” were repeated before Poppy headed into the next track. On stage, the singer occasionally played the guitar, keyboard and even the drums for a short moment. Poppy ended her set with her song ‘Concrete’ before waving the crowd goodbye and blowing them kisses.
After a 20 minute interval, Bad Omens’ set began at 21:00. The four-piece, existing of lead singer Noah Sebastian, guitarist Joakim “Jolly” Karlsson, bassist Nicholas Ruffilo and drummer Nick Folio, opened the show with their heavy track ‘ARTIFICIAL SUICIDE’. During this song, Sebastian wore a mask which he took off before heading into the second track which was introduced by a voice-over, continuing the AI theme of the night. At the start of ‘Like a Villain’, the confetti cannons went off for the first time that night. Throughout the whole evening, the band makes great use of the stage and props – especially Sebastian walks all around the stage and its platforms, occasionally sitting or crouching down to get closer to the fans. Folio and his drum set are positioned upstage, with the other band members taking the stairs to get up there with him during songs such as ‘Take Me First’. The visual effects on the LED screens and the light fixtures are aided in their atmospheric endeavour by several CO2 machines and blasters, filling the stage with smoke. Several of the songs such as ‘IDWT$’ were preluded by a short video.
Throughout the night, the band played songs from all three of their albums, including the first song they ever released – ‘Glass Houses’. Sebastian asks the crowd to jump with him during several tracks, including this one. While the crowd was ecstatic to do so, and while they were definitely loud and excited, the amount of moshing and crowd surfing was not as huge as anticipated. Nonetheless, it was visible how much the audience enjoyed the show – they yelled along to every word.
About halfway through the set, the band played their track ‘bad decisions’ – a song that is a lot slower than their usual ones, making for a lovely change of tempo with the crowd waving along to the rhythm. After ‘Nowhere to Go’, the band is joined on stage by Poppy to play their brand new collaboration ‘V.A.N.’ (Violence Against Nature), a song based on the AI in the band’s comics. Most of the track is sung by Poppy, like the entire studio version, but on stage Sebastian adds his grunts to the latter half of the song, performing once again with his mask on.
Over the speakers, a remix of ‘Miracle’ is played while the band gets ready for the final few songs. For a few minutes, 013 is turned into somewhat of a club with laser-like lights and a dancing crowd before the men come back on stage to play ‘Never Know’. Right after, they play their latest album’s title track and then finish with a beautiful rendition of ‘Just Pretend’ where Sebastian asked the crowd to sing along with him and to put their lighters or phone flashlights into the air. Confetti goes off one more time while the band goes off stage one more time before the encore. For reasons unexplained, the break lasted quite long – it took almost ten minutes before the last video started playing, after that the band finally came back to play ‘Concrete Jungle’ – having the crowd chant along, screaming ‘Jungle’ after every one of Sebastian’s ‘Concrete’s, and opening the mosh pit one last time tonight. The band then finished it all off with their track ‘Dethrone’.
The night was definitely one to never forget, with a wide array of iconic moments, such as Sebastian tapping Jolly’s ass with his microphone. It is moments like this that made the night both serious as well as fun. The band is absolutely astonishing live and it’s only a matter of time before they start playing even bigger venues with even greater stage sets.
Photo Credit: Bryan Kirks
Written by: Mandy Huibregtsen
Edited by: Naomi Krauthausen
