The Wombats played a show at the Georg-Elser Halle in Hamburg on Tuesday July 21st, with support from Cherryholt as part of their 2026 Summer Shows. Multiple flights of stairs up; the venue is hidden on top of an old bunker. On the way to the top multiple people stopped to take in the great view.
First on were Cherryholt; Reuben Baskerville (vocals, guitar), Harvey Walsh (guitar), Ben Walsh (bass), Dylan Austwick (drums) and Dan Goldspink (keys). Although not many people seemed to know them from the get-go, it was noticeable that Cherryholt managed to hook on a few with their music! Fans started to understand their music more as their set went on and they found themselves clapping after songs. The band sang songs like ‘Rose’, ‘seventeen’ and ‘flies’.
Then it was time for the main act, The Wombats, Matthew Murphy (vocals, guitar, keys), Tord Øverland Knudsen (bass, keys, vocals) and Dan Haggis (drums, vocals). The whole room filled with cheering when Matthew said “Hello”, and they started with the song ‘Sorry I’m Late’. Then they went on to play the songs ‘Moving To NY’ and ‘Techno Fan’.
Matthew thanked the crowd, “Dankeschön. Thank you so much for being here tonight”. He also mentioned that he remembered when they were in Hamburg playing at the Molotow Club. The club has a capacity of up to 530 and the Georg-Elser-Halle a capacity of up to 2200! For the song ‘Ready For The High’, a person came on stage in a giant Wombat costume and played the trombone. As soon as the first note of ‘Pink Lemonade’ hit the mic, fans sang along, one could notice that it’s a fan favorite!
Introducing ‘Kill The Director’ the lead singer mentioned that “about 20 years ago” their first ever album Proudly Present… A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation came out, which said song is on. They started the first lines singing it in acapella and then went over to singing it normally. Just before ‘Method To The Madness’, Matthew animated the audience to do a moshpit during the song. ‘Lethal Combination’ got introduced to be “about ridiculous evenings”.
Before ‘Lemon To A Knife Fight’, Tord and Matthew joked about dedicating it to the elevators in the building by playing the intro of it in a sort of elevator style music as badly as they could. We can only disagree with the latter, they did succeed in making it sound rather like lift music, it didn’t sound bad at all though! Going into ‘Tokyo’, the band started to play it beautifully instrumentally, before they started with their vocals. ‘Turn’ was the song the Wombats played before the encore or as Matthew called it “our fake last song”. Coming back on stage for the encore the band first played ‘Greek Tragedy’.
On behalf of the band, Matthew thanked the crowd once more, for having made the band’s dreams come true and also for having come down to the gig, he said they’ve been awesome! Then they closed their set with ‘Lets Dance To Joy Divison’. Contrary to earlier, not one but three people dressed as giant wombats joined the band on stage and danced along during it!
All in all, it was a successful gig; the band seemed to have fun on stage and the fans as well. Especially during the more known songs towards the end, but also during the rest, people danced, clapped and sang along. The Wombats still have upcoming shows in Germany this year, to which you can buy a link here!
