This Will Destroy You
April 9, 2025| Nessie Spencer |LIVE REVIEW
Live Review: This Will Destroy You, Nordic Giants | Concorde 2, Brighton | 12/03/2025
An anniversary tour and the final hurrah of This Will Destroy You as we know it, but with extra emotions, post-rock dreaminess and goosebumps as the Texan legends return to Brighton a few weeks ago.
Nordic Giants
The evening started with Nordic Giants, arriving at the legendary Concorde 2 stage at 8pm sharp. For those who have never taken the time to delve into their music, the best way we can define them would be “a visual and sensory experience mixing cinematic soundtracks and compelling short movies, like a soundtrack but for our own lives”. Every single song of theirs can easily speak to us in some ways, especially if you love your post-rock to be dreamy and self-reflective. They were lucky enough to perform with This Will Destroy You for the UK leg of their European tour, which started in Brighton, Nordic Giants’s home turf.
Going through the motions with the giant screen projecting the short movies accompanying their music and never seen without their masks and feather war costumes, Loki (electric piano) and Rôka (drums), show that they do not need much to cast a spell to an audience. Very early on, the crowd was euphoric but also very moved by what they were experiencing. The applauses in between songs would be loud and roaring, but the moment they start performing, not a peep from anyone, all you could hear was these two playing their best songs and displaying fantastic short films such as In Shadow (‘Philosophy of Mind’), Pencilhead (‘Together’) or the beautiful Sundays (‘Dark Clouds Mean War’), we could also see Alex Hedley‘s face during the ironically titled ‘Faceless’, a song he featured in 2022’s Symbiosis projected in the two screens they had: one was a regular schmegular big screen and the other was some sort of Babadook-looking creature who would sometimes show glistening birds of prey showing up. The entire show was phenomenal, and once again, Nordic Giants did not disappoint.
This Will Destroy You
Just about twenty minutes later, the almighty This Will Destroy You arrived on stage to perform their self-titled album in full, which made a lot of people in the audience ecstatic to the nth degree. Heck, some of the audience members might not have been born by the time this album was released. With that in mind, it was the perfect occasion to see for themselves why TWDY are undisputed champions when it comes to cinematic post-rock vibes. This tour also marks the end of an era, as the band recently decided to split the entity in two: This Will Destroy You and You, Infinite, respectively fronted by guitarists Chris King (who wasn’t part of the tour) and Jeremy Galindo (who was very much there).
Accompanied by Johnnie McBryde, the guitarist/vocalist from Monochromes, Nicholas Huft and Ethan Billips, who are also part of King’s new iteration of TWDY, the quartet did not spare us a single minute to collect ourselves because they were playing beautifully and intensely the entire time. It genuinely felt like a suspended moment which you did not want to wake up. The first part of the set was dedicated to their self-titled album and felt like it was 2005 all over again, when times were a bit easier on us and when post-rock were all the rage in the UK – which explains why TWDY still have such a strong fandom despite hailing from Middle O’ Nowhere, Texas.
Reminiscing the good old days whilst ‘Villa Del Refugio’, ‘They Move on Tracks of Never-Ending Light’, and ‘The Mighty Rio Grande’ were played was a moment that will remain in the heads of many of the people at C2 for quite some time. It was goosebumps, goosebumps and more goosebumps, and more goosebumps on top of goosebumps. Jeremy took the stage for a short bit after sitting down the entire time at the far left of the stage to thank the audience for their unwavering support and for allowing them to be part of a special journey, which was as earnest and heartfelt as it can get.
The second part of the set was like a greatest-hits of some sorts, sprinkled with two you, infinite covers back to back, which was also a good opportunity for those who want to forget about This Will Destroy You 2.0 to appreciate Galindo‘s art to the fullest. It felt nice hearing some of King’s compositions being executed with such grace live, even if it also felt like something essential was missing, Chris King. That being said, it was near impossible not to feel something when ‘New Topia’ and ‘The World Is Our ___’ were played. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe they are just incredible songs to begin with, maybe it’s both, but it was fantastic and, every second of the set was thoroughly enjoyed because, deep down, we knew that this was a special set and that we might never hear TWDY this way for the foreseeable future.
Simply, it was a wonderful evening down in Brighton where everyone got to headbang and dance their cares away for a little less than two hours and with everything that is going on in the world and in our personal lives; we really, really needed it. This Will Destroy You might not have chosen that moniker on purpose, but it did destroy something precious, and we cannot wait to see more of it in a new form soon.
