Live review: Ice Nine Kills, London OVO Arena Wembley

“How the fuck are you doing tonight?” asks Spencer Charnas. Ice Nine Kills are 30 minutes into their headline set when the frontman utters a word to this sold-out crowd. Instead, he's been busy with acts of murder, decapitation and presiding over Hannibal Lecter biting a cop's face off. Never mind jolliness, when the bloodthirsty Bostonians are in charge of the Christmas celebrations, ’tis the season to be gory.

This evening is a marathon not a sprint, though. At 6:35pm there might be fewer ‘runners’ than opener TX2 might like, but the man also known as Evan Thomas and his bandmates hold nothing back from the early birds.

Admittedly, some of the production work does a lot of the heavy lifting, whether it’s galvanising people with a cranked up intro tape of Limp Bizkit’s Break Stuff, or incessant strobes that give proceedings a manic edge. Unsurprisingly, MAD, TX2’s collaboration with the headliners and featuring an appearance from members of INK, goes down a storm – though it’s encouraging that closer I Would Hate Me Too, his own song without the added clout of special guests, is received just as enthusiastically.

The Devil Wears Prada, as vocalist Mike Hranica reminds us, have been doing this for 20 years. Despite guitarist and co-vocalist Jeremy DePoyster’s assertion that it’s long been the Ohio outfit’s “dream” to play at this venue, one can’t help thinking that doing so as the second slot on a four-band bill two decades in might not have been exactly the circumstances they saw that desire playing out in.

They play to a bigger crowd than TX2, though it would be a stretch to suggest they receive a proportionally bigger response, with their rather breathless display not always delivering. For You, for instance, dedicated to “the ladies”, isn’t received as the gift it’s meant as, earning a rather muted response. Thankfully, Chemical, accompanied by a sea of phone lights, makes for a more grandstanding moment.

Creeper are clearly TDWP fans, dedicating Black Heaven to them, which is almost definitely the best song played all night. A few years ago, their inclusion on this bill might have seemed odd. Sure, the Southampton goth-punks have always had a penchant for theatre, but until relatively recently theirs was a gentler and more empathetic strain of pageantry.

With the release of this year’s Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death (the titular character of which heralds the band's arrival in all her morbid, muscly glory), however, they’ve significantly dialled up the darkness, dastardliness and, yes, horniness. Their eight-song set is split evenly between their most recent album and its predecessor, 2023’s Sanguivore, so is chock-full of William Von Ghould’s brooding baritone.

Headstones brings the kind of rock opera pomp that befits the scale of this stage, while the key changes of Cry To Heaven make the heart soar. As soon as they finish, bringing the biggest year of their lives to a glorious finish, Creeper announce a UK tour for next spring. Given this brief taste of the jugular, it can’t come quick enough.

This weekend, London belongs to Ice Nine Kills. Christmas has long provided a subversive setting for horror films, whether it’s 1984’s Gremlins or last year’s Terrifier 3. The latter, you’ll recall, features their A Work Of Art. This tour shares that name, a reference to Terrifier’s antagonist Art The Clown, whose alter ego, actor David Howard Thornton, will be doing meet and greets at the London debut of Silver Scream Con. Art makes an appearance tonight, dressed as a King's Guard and executing Father Christmas with a shot to the head in front of Creeper's Hannah Greenwood, before turning his attention to actress Rose McGowan, who’s wheeled onto the stage tied to a chair and butchered.

The fact these headline-grabbing moments are just two among countless others is testament to just how insanely stacked INK’s set is. During their 90 minutes, there is barely a second or an inch of stage that’s not filled with balls of fire, chainsaws and axes, dismembered cadavers, splattering blood and video screens showing a lot more besides.

It’s as unhinged as you’d expect from all that, plus covers of songs by Katrina And The Waves (Walking On Sunshine) and fellow Bostonians The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (The Impression That I Get), supplemented by members of Reel Big Fish on brass. This is GWAR + Rammstein + Andrew Lloyd Webber + Eurovision and it’s absolutely fucking bananas, which should be applauded, as Spencer does at one point, using an amputated pair of hands.

The spectacle is, by design, completely inseparable from the music, a designed-for-live metalcore roar with tunes that riff on everything from The Silence Of The Lambs (Meat & Greet) to Candyman (Farewell II Flesh) to IT (IT Is The End) and American Psycho (Hip To Be Scared). Something is definitely lost in the few moments when the bells and whistles are toned down, but it’s churlish to throw shade at a show that chucks absolutely everything at its audience – blood, heads, confetti – in service of a great time. It’s also worth noting the broad range of ages in attendance, from old school metal fans to young kids developing a taste for the noisy and the macabre.

The good news is: Ice Nine Kills aren’t changing anytime soon. Towards the end, a call comes in on the big screen from Scream slasher Ghostface, who confirms in that iconic threatening tone that INK will be doing the song for the forthcoming seventh entry in the Scream franchise, released in February. Plus, only a few months later, the band will play at Download Festival alongside the likes of Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Bad Omens.

“It has been a horror and a pleasure,” signs off Spencer as this massacre comes to an end. On tonight’s evidence, you better strap in now: 2026 is going to be killer.

Read this next:

• Ice Nine Kills: “Horror has always been in my blood and it always will be”
• Creeper: “We’re turning rock’n’roll on its head”
• From Kurt Cobain to Wes Craven: The icons who inspired Ice Nine Kills’ Spencer Charnas