I Prevail Gig Review

Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse

22 September 2026

Words and Pictures: Phil Ingham

Ahead of taking our places in the photo pit for tonight’s show, photographers were warned to be aware of pyrotechnics during I Prevail’s set. Pyro at a metalcore show isn’t unusual in itself, but the fact we were asked to be mindful of this within the first three songs told us all we needed to know about what was to come. I Prevail were in Manchester to go HARD!

Before that though, newcomers Gore. took to the stage to warm up the early but impressively full arena. They wasted no time in establishing themselves with a series of melodic but ferocious songs that set the pace for the evening perfectly. Vocalist Haley Roughton, slight in stature but not in performance, dominated the stage. She was equally superb delivering soaring clean vocals and low, dirty gutturals, and slipped effortlessly between the two all evening. The rest of the band were no less impressive. Bassist Devin Birchfield brought incredible energy to the stage and precision to his music. I’m not sure I have seen many musicians who have seemed just so bloody happy to be on stage. Alongside him, Alex Reyes brought muscular guitar and Wills Weller drove the set along from his drum kit. It was a set that swung between weighty riff-driven songs and moments of mellow, almost fragile segments. While the transition could have been jarring, Gore. made the extremes make sense. Similarly, their ability to shift between genres within songs as well as across them, was skilled. They defied their position as openers showing the stage presence, craftsmanship and confidence of a band far beyond their three years.

Aussie metalcore stalwarts Polaris took a warmed-up crowd and cranked the heat even further. I watched the band headline the O2 Ritz in Manchester in 2024 and thought they brought a vicious performance, fuelled by recent grief and anger following the tragic loss of guitarist Ryan Siew. Time has not diluted their brutality in any way. From their opening track ‘Dissipate’ to the finisher ‘Nightmare’, the band delivered an eight-song masterclass in live metal. It was simultaneously raw as hell and forensically tight. The energy on stage soon infected the crowd, with circle pits erupting all over the now-packed crowd and increasing waves of joyous metalheads surfing over the barrier. Jamie Hails threw everything into the vocals. Between angry screams, he struggled to keep the emotion from his face as he watched the moshing throng move to the band’s tune. On the form shown in Manchester in 2026, Polaris are up there with the best heavy bands on the live scene. The bar was set high for headliners I Prevail.

The chugging opening to ‘NWO’ reignited the crowd, and they were kept moving for the rest of the show. When I have listened to I Prevail on record, I’ve found they intersperse their pummelling metal with radio-friendly pop-tinged numbers. While still undoubtedly melodic at times, their live performance strips away the gloss and remains firmly in head-banging territory. This is perhaps best demonstrated when the band move into their breakout song ‘Blank Space’, a Taylor Swift cover that goes much harder live than the single does. There is nothing quite so fun as seeing a crowd of metalheads become a moshing sea of hirsute Swifties! The cover versions didn’t stop there, with Metallica’s ‘Sad but True’ serving as a strong segue into ‘Rain’. We were treated to some gems during the evening, including Gore.’s Haley joining the band for new song Paradise and with Gabe Helguera going to town on the skins in a short but perfectly formed drum solo.

The walls were quite literally running with sweat such was the temperature within the venue, the blazing flames of the aforementioned pyrotechnics and the constant motion of the crowd but despite the heat the energy and enthusiasm remained peak. It is easy to imagine the band moving into even bigger arenas. The counterplay of Eric Vanlerberghe’s screams and growls, and Dylan Bowman’s cleans, set against the twin guitars of Bowman and lead Steve Menoian, lift the sound way beyond straightforward metalcore. It helps that every member appears completely zoned into the performance, at once lost in the performance and engaged with their fans. For all the polish of their recorded material, this was I Prevail stripped back to the things that make a live metal show spectacular: heaviness, sweat, fire, riffs and a crowd prepared to throw itself around throughout. The warning in the photo pit suddenly made perfect sense: I Prevail hadn’t come to Manchester to go gently into the night. They had come to set the place on fire.