I Prevail Bring The Violent Nature Tour to Birmingham
Adrenaline-infused, full of heart and non-stop movement. We took to the O2 Academy in Birmingham for the final date of the UK run of The Violent Nature Tour to see if I Prevail had anything left to give to the UK crowds following their larger-than-life performance at Ally Pally and a sold-out show the night before, and we weren’t disappointed.
Where the Ally Pally show was a spectacle of fire and light displays, the Academy show in Birmingham stripped the performance down to a more intimate version. With no larger-than-life pyro bursts or LED displays, the focus was entirely on the band’s ability to command a room without the theatrics of a big arena in their pocket.
Gore., founded by daytime NASA engineer Hayley Roughton and having been on a consistent rise since their inception in 2023, launched into their set with the hauntingly melodic lines of ‘Wrath’ from their 2025 If You Do Not Fear Me… EP. Roughton’s vocals range from soft and melodic before bursting into a fiery rage as the breakdown hits and the crowd erupts into a frenzy of movement. This continues into ‘Sepsis’, a deeply personal song about surviving turbulent relationships, before ending on ‘Babylon’, which she has previously described as a track that centres on the desire for a traditional marriage, motherhood and unconditional love, subjects rarely approached in the heavier scene.
Polaris are up next, and where Gore. eased the crowd in with their a cappella intro, vocalist Jamie Hails takes a different approach by launching himself onto the stage with his signature headbanging as the band launches into the riff-heavy ‘Dissipate’. The Aussie lads are no strangers to UK crowds, but they have been thoroughly missed. Having last played Download in 2025, their year-and-a-half-long absence has been clearly felt in the crowd, which sings along to every word of their set. Their most recent release, ‘Without You’, is a wholly welcome addition to their set. A song about loss, grief and a dedication to late guitarist Ryan Siew, this is Polaris’ first release since his passing. The energy doesn’t let up at all as they run through fan favourites ‘Landmine’ and ‘Hypermania’ before ending on ‘Nightmare’.
I Prevail open with ‘NWO’ from their latest album, Violent Nature, and you can’t help but truly feel that this is a new world order for I Prevail. It’s no secret that since their split with former clean vocalist Brian Burkheiser, the band has been subject to a certain level of criticism in the metalcore world. Questions about who will be performing the cleans, song splits, and new versus old material have all been overanalysed for the past year, but throughout, the band has stayed consistent, and the reshaping of their sound has been clearly welcomed by UK crowds.
The set is a well-balanced mix of old and new material. From the aggressive ‘Bow Down’ to the slower-paced ballad ‘Rain’, which sees vocalist Eric Vanlerberghe deliver stunningly beautiful cleans, they prove themselves to be one of the best that modern metalcore has to offer.
Guitarist Dylan Bowman does a great job throughout the set of taking on the clean sections, including a delightful yet strange addition of Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’, and Gabe Helguera is a non-stop force behind the kit, even adding a thundering drum solo to the set.
There’s no shortage of banter and crowd engagement, either. Early on, Eric tells the crowd that whether this is your first show or you’ve seen I Prevail before, “we’re now automatically best friends”, before conveniently seeming to forget long-time guitarist Dylan when running through the band introductions. He then dedicates the last song of the set to him, saying it’s about “friendship and happiness”, before correcting himself and admitting that, no, it’s about “burning it all the fuck down: Gasoline”.
We hope to see them next year during the festival season. I Prevail are currently confirmed to perform at Tons of Rock in Oslo and Rock am Ring/Rock im Park in Germany in June 2027.
