My Bloody Valentine
Wembley Arena, London
25th November 2025

As My Bloody Valentine return for their first live shows since 2018, Nils van der Linden is quite literally blown away by a band who somehow manage to sound both more beautiful and seismic than they did when he last saw them over a decade ago.

Built for roughly £1.7 billion, the Sphere in Las Vegas has a 15,000 m² wraparound LED screen and almost 1,600 speakers to create the most immersive live performance experience possible. My Bloody Valentine can achieve something similar — but far more visceral and far more human — with far less: a standard arena, some projectors and lights, guitars and effects pedals, and what must be racks and racks of amplifiers cranked up to 11.

Less gig, more life-changing experience, their live show feels like floating in a warm sea, rising and falling with the gentle swells; sometimes being pummelled by tidal waves. Yes, they’re loud. But, unlike Boeing 747s and jackhammers, there’s transformative beauty at such volume. And, on a less esoteric level, it literally hits, rattles, and shakes your body.

Cigarette In Your Bed, for example, masterfully contrasts moments of angelic vocals and strummed acoustic guitars with sudden outbursts of savage power. Only Shallow, with drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig sounding alternately like a heartbeat and a machine gun, flashes between ethereal floating and air raid siren intensity.

With expert command of volume, dynamics, and performance, the apocalyptic bits of Nothing Much To Lose bleed in and out of the longer melodic parts, until the lead guitar goes into absolute overdrive to cut through the sheer wall of sound at the song’s end. The aggressive Feed Me With Your Kiss goes all out all the way, Kevin Shields’ and Bilinda Butcher’s voices swirling through the onslaught of drums and Debbie Googe’s take no prisoners bass playing.

But it’s the rumbling, shapeshifting five minutes of sustained full-volume reverb at the heart of finale You Made Me Realise that really kicks you in the teeth. Apart from the physical impact, the overstimulation really starts to mess with your brain before the actual melody returns to drop you back into that comfortable sea.

As much as volume plays a part in My Bloody Valentine’s live performances, there’s obviously so much more to the band. Shoegaze progenitor Off Your Face is all about strummed acoustic guitar, dreamy voices, and Googe’s bassline. Thorn, with Shield’s earnest vocal, the wiry guitars, and that hyperactively jangling bass, clearly influenced a band or two (or three) in the late ’80s.

The languid Who Sees You, built around Ó Cíosóig’s loping groove, shows off a Hendrix quality to Shields’ playing. A woozy Wonder 2 adds drum ‘n’ bass rhythms, while indie dancefloor staple (and crowd favourite) Soon elicits what must count as euphoria at a My Bloody Valentine gig: people (like me) who’ve spent the whole night doing little more than nod their head and bite their lip actually wave their arms around and grin.

Yet, as flawless as the music sounds, tonight isn’t about soulless perfection. Guitars are tested between songs; Ó Cíosóig plays a couple of cheeky fills as roadies hand over instruments; there are even a few false starts, all of which lifts some of the mystique surrounding the band and their performance. They prefer to let the music and the trippy visuals do the talking, literally: Shields waves at the start of the show, says “thank you” at the end, and makes a self-deprecating comment about his age at one point. Otherwise, there’s no audience interaction, just five often heavily backlit musicians somehow concocting this otherworldly music and creating an utterly enveloping experience. It’s a live show like no other.

~

You can find MyBloody Valentine on their website as well as Facebook, Instagram, and X.

Words by Nils van der Linden. You can visit his author profile for Louder Than War here and his website here.

Photos by Isaac Watson.