Live Review: Arch Enemy – Rebellion, Manchester
11th August 2026
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Rich Price
Arch Enemy bring the curtain down on their twelve-date Root of All Evil tour, which has seen them swapping theatres for clubs, with this set at the sold-out Rebellion Bar in Manchester, swapping the usual crowd of thousands for a capacity of around five hundred. Unsurprisingly, the tickets were snapped up in a matter of minutes, but we at The Razor’s Edge managed to get access and bring you all the action.
Now, I say we, but I was stood at the back taking notes, while Rich the photographer was in the thick of it, buffeted and battered to get the best shots; he looked a shell of a man when it’d finished, with either the heat or intense trauma being the deciding factor.
This is also the band’s introduction of new vocalist, Lauren Hart, the former Once Human singer who replaced the departed Alissa White-Gluz last year.
There’s no support band, only Arch Enemy, locked, loaded and ready to explode. It’s a whole plethora of classic hard rock and metal tunes over the PA from the likes of Priest, Sabbath, Ozzy and Rainbow, as well as Bon Jovi, White Lion and Quiet Riot, to keep the capacity crowd entertained until the nine o’clock start.
It’s already starting to get warm before a note has been played. The temperature gauge in the car was giving a balmy twenty-seven degrees as the evening drew in, so this is bound to be getting steamy.
Fastway’s Tear Down the Walls from the Trick or Treat soundtrack acts as the intro tape with the band hitting the stage to Silent Wars from Anthems of Rebellion back in 2003; it’s clear we’re watching a band punching way below their weight, and one perhaps no longer accustomed to such confined spaces. The air is thick with the power of Arch Enemy’s roar, as soundwaves bludgeon the lucky assembled few like a tsunami.
Lauren instantly shows herself to be a firecracker of a focal point, with a set of pipes equal to Angela Gossow’s fierce snap and snarl. The first of many visits to Wages of Sin comes early in the form of The First Deadly Sin, which Lauren admits to learning to drive to, though wouldn’t really recommend it. Mixing speed with slower, doomy sections, brutality with the melodic, this one demonstrates the range of Arch Enemy from early in their career. Ravenous blends the harsh with the symphonic, War Eternal shows the technicality and newbie, To the Last Breath, harkens back to the glory days of the early millennium.
We’re only half a dozen songs in but it feels like we’re all being slowly steamed. Lauren throws water over the front of the crowd before opining that it’s going to start raining sweat. Bury Me an Angel is introduced as the first song Michael Amott wrote for Arch Enemy, and it brims with youthful exuberance: excessive speed, meaty breakdown, choppy riffs and punchy rhythms, all the things we come to the band for, laid out in a single track.
Following an anthemic Under Black Flags We March, which sees fists pumping the air, and The Eagle Flies Alone in which the heat had reached critical mass and even Lauren is looking shiny, we get the bouncing rhythms of No Gods, No Masters, where the now-congealed collection of bodies jump as one; it’s like a king rat, but with perspiration.
Flashing strobes come with the partial instrumental of I Am Legend/ Out for Blood and any hope of a pit starting it negated by both the heat and the density of the packed bodies. Seizure-inducing strobes flood the room during Dead Bury Their Dead, Burning Angel is a must, and there’s a World
Cup inspired hydration break before Dead Eyes See No Future. The main set ends with Arch Enemy’s 2003 break out track, We Will Rise and has Lauren windmilling to the last.
More water is handed out before the encores begin and the Water Man – a crew member handing out bottles of O2 – suddenly becomes the hero of the evening, even getting his own chant. Lauren joins in the water distribution, as though on a Red Cross relief effort.
Encores of Blood On Your Hands, Snow Bound, and Nemesis take us into the finale of instrumental Fields of Desolation, bringing an end to the show and Arch Enemy’s jaunt around a selected dozen clubs across Europe.
It was clear from the outset that the band have outgrown such confines, but it’s great to see what happened when an outfit more used to far big stages and arenas comeback to where it all started. And what happens are nights like this… incredible.
Photo credits: Rich Price
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