Between the Buried and Me @ Islington Assembly Hall (2026)
19/02/2026
You Win Again Gravity
Not bad!/10
IHLO
Setlist
HaarWraith
Source
Cenotaph
Union
I'm certainly interested in both support bands enough to want to listen to their stuff properly at home some time now that I'd seen them both live, which is a little more than I expected to be honest. I listened to maybe one song by You Win Again Gravity some time before this show and liked what I heard. I especially enjoyed watching Adam in particular! Great guitarist!
And as for IHLO, damn they've got a really cool drummer! I'll spare y'all from me being autistic about how cool I find their drum setup to be. Given my especially picky taste in prog metal and whatnot these days, my initial impression on trying out some of their stuff at home was basically "sigh... djent...", but it was worth me seeing their full live set to really get it. I've seen them be compared to the likes of TesseracT and Leprous (the latter they very recently had also been touring with), both I can see off the strength of the vocals and drums in particular, much more so the former personally, but I already find IHLO much more compelling than anything either band have put out since after each of their respective 2013 albums (Altered State and Coal). They do it very well!
Cool!/10
Between the Buried and Me
Setlist
Absent ThereafterSelkies: The Endless Obsession
Condemned to the Gallows
God Terror
Sun of Nothing
Stare into the Abyss
Prehistory
The Blue Nowhere
Encore:
Silent Flight Parliament
Goodbye to Everything Reprise
If you're new here, BTBAM are one of my absolute favourite bands and have been the sole metal band I look up to the most creatively... admittedly more for pre-Coma Ecliptic stuff than anything else, but even if The Blue Nowhere in particular is far from a favourite of mine, I do think it is their most creative album to date and I massively respect it for that alone and for BTBAM being that uncompromising in their unrestrained creativity.
I'll spoiler setlist-talk because of course this was the very first show of their UK / Europe tour this year, although this may be the bulk of this whole entry... Either way, I'm kinda privileged from having seen their 2+ hour set in London in 2019 and both of their ArcTanGent sets last year, so it bothers me less to deal with (inevitably, for a band like BTBAM especially) mixed setlists, which imo this was, but I mainly boil that down to mixture of very strong highlights and songs that I still enjoyed but don't fit into that category for me, so yeah, still all good at the end of the day. Anyway...
Setlist talk
I already knew of the setlist they'd been touring with in the US towards the end of 2025. The main thing that stood out to me there was them playing a song from The Parallax EP for the first time in quite a long time, along with 'Extremophile Elite'... The main thing that stood out to me at this show was that they didn't do that here. Mind you, they appeared to be scheduled for about 21:15 but they started at 21:40 instead, since the first band started at 20:00 instead of 19:45, blah blah blah. I'll be so mad if that's the one thing they cut out of this setlist and kept it on the following dates when they may be on earlier than they were here. Certainly, the more the merrier when it comes to BTBAM. Unfortunately, again, I'm picky.'Absent Thereafter' is pretty much a microcosm of everything I do and don't like so much about that latest album, but I can't say it wasn't fun live at least! 'Selkies' being the very second song they played certainly surprised me, and I am especially pleased with them playing 'Sun of Nothing' instead of just ending the whole show with 'Informal Gluttony' being the sole Colors song pick, and honestly, I think the only thing that would've been a better pick from that album imo would've been 'White Walls', but that just goes to show you how much I love 'Sun of Nothing' in particular anyway.
I'm very glad they kept 'God Terror'. An odd one on the album, honestly for better I reckon, and while I say this knowing they were also playing it a bunch on their previous US tour anyway, I figured this would be an especially fun one live and was looking forward to it, and it was! What I'm not personally as bothered about is the 'Stare Into the Abyss', 'Prehistory' and 'The Blue Nowhere' run of tracks just before the encore. Underwhelming picks, especially regarding songs they could've picked from Colors II, though strictly in context of this being part of "The Blue Nowhere tour", I at least understand why they made those picks.
Despite it being hinted at on their Instagram, 'Silent Flight Parliament' as the encore was a very pleasant surprise! I wouldn't have accepted just a couple of shorter songs (or god forbid, Nirvana or Queen covers lmao) instead of one especially long and great song anyway, though admittedly I feared more of the former. I'd seen them play some real good picks from The Parallax II before anyway, so it's even better that I get this one checked off the list, as much as I was looking forward for my best friend to see them play 'Extremophile Elite' live... Though as of writing, who knows? They still could at their Manchester show.
I alluded to a sort of checklist of BTBAM songs in the section above... more of a live bucket list than anything else... More on that below.
BTBAM live song bucket list, etc.
Shevanel Cut a Flip
Ad A Dglgmut
Roboturner
Swim to the Moon
Specular Reflection
Augment of Rebirth
Lunar Wilderness
'White Walls' in particular, when I first saw them, is an especially fond memory of mine. I do wish I could've seen them play 'Ants of the Sky' and 'Prequel to the Sequel' under better circumstances but hell I'm still thrilled to have seen them play those...
'Psychomanteum' is by far my favourite song from their latest album, though I'd be perfectly fine cutting it if to make more room for, say, something like 'Backwards Marathon', 'Autodidact', etc. Yes, I especially like Alaska, how could you tell? 'The Proverbial Bellow' is also by far my favourite song from Automata but, honestly like 'Silent Flight Parliament' in particular, still wouldn't have even been on this list if I had any idea there'd be a chance I'd have been going to see it live at all.
That being said, I more or less don't expect them to play the remaining uncrossed tracks at all, though I'd love to be surprised! I wish I could bribe the band to play a relatively more intimate show with the uncrossed songs in question. This is one of very, very few situations where I think things would've worked out better for me, with BTBAM shows in particular, if I was living in the US.
Please play 'Swim to the Moon' next time, pls pls pls pls!
I would still consider this a great show, especially off the back of the songs they played that I found to be highlights! The balcony was a good choice too. I almost didn't go, because holy shit I had not been doing well this week, but I'm super glad I went! Being in or even around the standing area at concerts really fucking tires me out.
Had fun!/10