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Spent October watching all your favourite scary movies (plus checking out the new ones) and fancy something different for Halloween itself? Feeling slightly too old for trick-or-treating, or ploughing ahead anyway and looking to raise a toast to the spookiest night of the year afterwards? Step this way for our pick of the UK’s most ghoulish gigs on October 31.
Fontaines D.C. DJ set
Blondies, London
Blondies is a gloriously grubby New York-style dive bar dropped into unsuspecting Leyton; a terrifying prospect for anyone who prefers a gentrified boozer. On Halloween, proper street punks The Chisel will lay waste to the gaff. If there’s anything left after that, Fontaines drummer Tom Coll will spin tunes while tattoo artists ink up plucky punters who’ve picked designs from a limited selection that’s exclusive for the evening.
Halloween dress code: Nu-rave steam-punk
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
Aviva Studios, Manchester
In conversation with NME in 2022, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard singer and guitarist Joey Walker summed up the band’s supernaturally prolific output (27 wildly eclectic albums and counting). “If something is shit and no one likes it,” he reasoned, “you just put out another one the next month.” Thanks to their notoriously intense shows, they’re one of those bands you need to experience live to fully understand.
Halloween dress code: A wizard’s cloak and/or reptilian make-up. The band go all-in, so why shouldn’t you?
Arch Enemy
O2 Apollo Manchester
Well, it wouldn’t be a Halloween gig list without a storied metal band in the mix, would it? Three decades since their unholy formation, the Swedish titans have lost none of their ferocity, as their 12th album, ‘Bloody Dynasty’, proved earlier this year. There may be moments of melodicism in amongst the kick-drum chaos, but expect a true headbangers’ ball.
Halloween dress code: All-black, as if you’re out to frighten the normies at the local shopping centre
The Enemy
Leeds Becket Students’ Union, Leeds
‘We’ll Live and Die in These Towns’, The Enemy warned with the title of their classic debut album in 2007 – yet the Coventry indie tykes rose spectacularly back from the dead when they announced their reformation in 2022. Time to celebrate a comeback that’s continued apace, with the lads promising a new album (their first since 2015’s ’It’s Automatic’) on the way.
Halloween dress code: Skinny jeans and a mod hairdo, paired with an insolent scowl (imagine your mum said you can’t eat all your trick-or-treat sweets at once)
Black Country, New Road
O2 Academy Brixton, London
While south London’s most unclassifiable band have a reputation as wilfully obscure chorus-dodgers, their third album, ‘Forever Howlong’, proved they’re more than capable of ‘Hunky Dory’-style folk whimsy that’s impossible not to like. OK, don’t come expecting a singalong, but if you’re in the market for some of the most forward-thinking music being made today, you’ll be right at home.
Halloween dress code: Charity shop chic
The Orb
Hangar 24, Liverpool
Ambient house heroes The Orb released their 18th album, ‘Buddhist Hipsters’, just in time for this Halloween. It’s spooky rather than scary; a dubby concoction of spectral synth and eerie basslines, with snatches of samples that drift in like apparitions. The Orb and Hangar 24 – a warehouse space located in Liverpool’s ultra-cool Baltic Triangle district – are the perfect combo for a night when the ghosts come out to play.
Halloween dress code: Hipster Buddhist (orange robe and retro cross-body bag, obvs)
Jehnny Beth
Camden Assembly, London
The multi-talented Beth (musician, TV presenter, actor) wanted her latest record, the colossal ‘You Heartbreaker, You’, to tap into the primal punk energy of her former band Savages. She certainly delivered. Its bruising lead single ‘Broken Rib’ begins with a blood-curdling scream, she told NME, because “the world was broken, I was broken, but it’s not a sad thing”, adding: “How can a song recompose those fragments? Is it like a Frankenstein beast?”
Halloween dress code: Stitches and nuts and bolts
Haim
OVO Hydro, Glasgow
All acts go through eras, but few make as decisive a break with the past as Haim did with ‘I Quit’, which saw them enter a whole new phase. Their first album made without lead vocalist and drummer Danielle Haim’s former partner Ariel Rechtshaid is a breezy affair that’s all about moving on. And with guitarist Alana pursuing an acting career in Hollywood with the likes of the brilliantly bonkers One Battle After Another, it’s clear they’re still fighting fit.
Halloween dress code: A glossy wig and, of course, a big sign that declares: “I QUIT”
The Lovely Eggs
Metronome, Nottingham
NME once described Lancaster’s The Lovely Eggs as “one of the country’s most beloved underground bands”. This is breakneck lo-fi punk delivered with a volley of gags (yes, the latest album is called ‘Eggsistentialism’) and Nottingham’s 400-capacity Metronome is the kind of intimate venue in which they thrive. Bring your sense of humour.
Halloween dress code: The duo released an ‘Eggsistentialism’ B-sides and outtake compilation called ‘Bin Juice’, so maybe a bin bag?
Inhaler
Royal Albert Hall, London
Inhaler went arena-sized with this year’s ‘Open Wide’, an album that proved frontman Elijah Hewson certainly inherited a thing or two from dad, U2’s Bono. Out were scuzzy indie anthems; in was glam-rock stomp, shimmering ‘80s-style synth and, in the soaring title track, a yearning rock ballad that Sam Fender would be proud of. Live at the historic Royal Albert Hall, they’ll take your breath away.
Halloween dress code: Bono-style wraparound shades, if you really want to freak out Hewson
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