Photo: Nick Davarias

Live Review: I Prevail – EU/UK 2023 Tour – OVO Arena Wembley, London

Originally, I Prevail’s London show was supposed to take place at the city’s O2 Forum Kentish Town. Upgraded and postponed in the pandemic to O2 Academy Brixton, all was looking good for Michigan rockers to return to the United Kingdom’s Soil. Unfortunately, due to an incident at the beloved Academy, shows scheduled there had to be moved or postponed – in this case to the OVO Arena Wembley. With support from Blind Channel, and Trash Boat, nothing was going to stop us heading down to check out this show.

Past Eurovision entrant Blind Channel were first to take to the stage. The Finnish sextet wasted little time getting the crowd warmed up as they launched into the fast paced ‘Alive or Only Burning’ before requesting the crowd to jump along to the second song ‘We Are No Saints’. Despite being the band’s first time in the Wembley Arena, Joel Hokka & Niko Moilanen bounced around every inch of the stage commanding the crowd at every moment they had. The band even managed to slip in a snippet of Papa Roach’s ‘Last Resort’ mid set (which went down well with the audience). The band’s short set ended on a high with fan favourite ‘Dark Side’ inviting the whole room to “put their middle fingers up”.

Photo: Nick Davarias

Also making their debut performance at the venue, Britain’s very own Trash Boat shortly followed. ‘Synthetic Sympathy’ opened the set before Tobi Duncan asked the audience to up the energy for ‘Silence Is Golden’ – starting the mosh pits to open up. This track would also see the band inviting Eric Vanlerberghe up on stage to help them out. Later in the set ‘Bad Entertainment’ saw the introduction of Charlie Rolfe (As Everything Unfolds) joining the band to fill in for Milkie Way’s (WARGASM UK) parts. The band’s rendition of Linkin Park’s ‘Given Up’ turned many heads within the arena, as Tobi laid down some truly exceptional raw vocals – that respectfully tributed Chester Bennington’s.

The room spun like a beyblade for the band’s latest single ‘Delusions of Grandeur’. Towards the end of the set Tobi told the room how this had been the “single best support run” before taking a moment to talk about venues taking merch cuts of 20%-30% which the audience made clear they weren’t happy about either with loud boo’s – he made clear that this wasn’t the people actually selling the merch in the venue and nobody should take this out on them. Trash Boat finished the set with ‘He’s So Good’ sparking a lot of people to crowdsurf along.

Walking onto the admittedly bare stage, I was worried that they might have not adjusted their planned Kentish Town Show – This thought was quickly eroded with the second song ‘Body Bag’ when pyro started warming up the room. Reawakening the energy set out by the supports, mosh pits were a staple of the set from start to finish. Unfortunately, the theatrics saw a slight hiccup in ‘Bad Things’ with one of the eight CO2 cannons continuing to go off after the rest – nevertheless this still looked pretty cool, and didn’t faze the band.

With this tour originally being for their 2019 album ‘TRAUMA’ it made sense that the setlist largely stuck to both this and their new album ‘TRUE POWER’, however it would have been nice to see a few more older tracks – with only 2016’s Lifelines being represented. I did enjoy the cover of ‘Chop Suey’ which saw the crowd chanting the lyrics back to the band, before they seamlessly went into ‘FWYTYK’.

As the night drew to a close, the band returned to the stage one final time for a two song encore featuring ‘Gasoline’, and ‘Bow Down’, with Eric Vanlerberghe coming out with an I Prevail Union Jack flag which he laid across the drum riser. The crowd didn’t let any energy go to waste on these last two tracks, jumping, moshing, and enjoying every last second before they’d have to go back to the real world.

I Prevail really proved that they were worthy of the venue upgrades, their energy didn’t let up at any point during their set, and the show went down extremely well with the fans in attendance. This show was outstanding from start to finish with all three bands making the most of the arena setting they found themselves in – there’s no doubt to me that this won’t be the last show at the arena for any of the three bands.

Photo: Nick Davarias