Live review: Loathe, London Electric Brixton

We have reached that festive time of year when everything is measured in ‘sleeps’. But while Santa’s arrival is a mere 20 snoozes away when Loathe take the stage for what they regularly remind us is their biggest ever UK headline show, the schedule for rock fans to awake and find Loathe’s new album has dropped down the chimney remains rather more shrouded in mystery.

Still, a UK headline tour – unfathomably, Loathe’s first since 2021 – is a more-than-decent stocking-filler, and the crackle of anticipation in this early-doors crowd is as palpable as that buzz you get in the pub on Christmas Eve. Talking of which…

“London, it’s time to go fucking crazy!” It definitely isn’t: Love Is Noise hit the stage at the ungodly hour of 6.25pm when, quite frankly, most of London hasn’t even had its tea yet. LIN, however, approach their set like a band that has eaten nothing but raw meat for days. Frontman Cam Humphrey sports a Paolo Maldini shirt but, while Maldini was famous for his defence, LIN go all-out-attack and it pays off, the crowd soon bouncing almost as much as Cam.

Zetra are a rather more cerebral experience; the sort of band who wear corpsepaint, bring their own fairytale mirror/portal on stage, perform on podiums and play music that sounds like Muse and Depeche Mode being kicked around by someone much heavier. Which is to say, not really like other bands at all. This is perhaps not their natural crowd, but even the rowdiest moshers soon come under their spell.

Relative absence, meanwhile, has only made hearts and minds grow fonder of Loathe, who walk on with their arms already aloft in triumph. They are instantly into their stride with the colossal Gifted Every Strength, a tantalising glimpse of what that new record might sound like. Another unreleased song, Revenant, is similarly hypnotic, but this is a show that largely relies on more familiar glories.

And what glories they are. Loathe are a rare band capable of both crushing power and suffocating beauty – often in the same song, sometimes in the same riff – and both sides are in full flow tonight, from the low-slung groove of Aggressive Evolution to the dreamy atmospherics of The Things They Believe. Add in frontman Kadeem France’s easy charisma and intriguing left turns such as Dimorphous Display (getting a rare airing on this tour), and you have a band with the potential to become the UK equivalent of Deftones, capable of shaping the future sound of an entire genre.

“This has been a very special show and a very special tour,” says Kadeem before an unstoppable encore of Is It Really You? and Gored and he’s right. That’s why, even 2128 nights since their last full album release – not that we’re counting – no one here will be putting Loathe on the naughty list any time soon.

Because everything comes to he who waits and, on tonight’s form, you sleep on Loathe’s next move at your peril.

Read this next:

• Loathe: “There’s a revolution of people wanting interesting, introspective, creative, weirdo sh*t”
• Zetra: “We can have fun with this, but it’s never a joke. It’s not silly. We’re not f*cking about”
• “Note to self: write easier parts!” Inside Love Is Noise’s debut album