Review & Photography by Manny Manson for MPM
The doors at bp pulse LIVE had barely finished humming when the first chords cut through the cavernous bowl of the arena and, for anyone who came for the whole ride, the night announced itself as one of those rare shows where each band, opener, support and headline, felt like its own fully realised universe but somehow also part of the same, fevered dream.
It was Sunday, November 23, 2025, and what the billing promised, Kelsy Karter & The Heroines, Bloodywood from New Delhi, and Halestorm on their nEVEREST run, turned out to be exactly that: three distinct fires, stoked separately, then allowed to crash into one another until the whole place was glowing. The gig was listed on the venue’s card and ticket pages as Halestorm with Bloodywood and Kelsy Karter & The Heroines on the bill, and the crowd had answered in the way Birmingham always does for a proper rock night: early, loud and with the sort of patient appetite that makes arena shows feel like a neighbourhood riot.
Kelsy Karter & The Heroines have always had a flair for theatrical contradiction, a voice that can be delicate and razor-edged within the same breath, stagecraft that flirts with vintage glam but is entirely of-the-moment, and opening at a place the size of the BP Pulse Live Arena, could have felt like a gamble. Instead, it felt like an affirmation.
They stepped on briskly and without fuss, drummer Sebastian Boyse into his kit with a metronomic calm, guitarist, Matt Peach, trading shapes and riffs with a confidence that stretched beyond the tidy persona Kelsy projects online; Tommy Gent’s bass lines that hugged a song’s bottom end and made everything sound like it had weight.
The set was compact but purposeful: God Knows I’ve Tried, (Missing Person), opened like a saloon-door confession, a slow-burn ballad with a lyrical apology and a vocal stretched thin in the best way. That track, originally released as one of her early singles and included on Kelsy’s Missing Person era material, has a history of feeling intimate even through speakers built for thousands; tonight’s rendition kept that intimacy while bulking up the chorus for arena effect.
From there they cranked into Laser to the Heart, (Love Made Me Do It), a June 14, 2024 single that wears its synth-hinted, big-eighties pop hooks like a leather jacket, and the crowd, still settling into the arena’s acoustics, found their rhythm with it. The Heroines’ guitar work on this song was particularly satisfying: tight, angular leads that doubled the melody on the chorus and then peeled away into a classic rock solo that sounded like a love-letter to stadium rock rather than a parody of it. Kelsy’s voice sat halfway between defiance and confession; when she pushed for the high, the sound system answered without flinching.
Cover You and Cryin’ followed, and on Cover You there was a neat trick: it’s a song that, on the album Love Made Me Do It (released earlier in 2025), is glossy and arranged to draw the ear. Live, the arrangement thinned to make room for the band’s heartbeat. Kelsy traded a verse with guitarist Matthew Peach in a way that made you feel like you were eavesdropping on a private argument. Slipping Cryin’, the “Aerosmith cover” into the set, was an affectionate nod that the band slipped in at the perfect time, arrived as a shot of classic rock adrenaline; Kelsy doesn’t imitate but appropriates that swagger and then folds it back into her own songwriting, which is part of her appeal. The Heroines’ rhythm section gave the cover an almost garage-band urgency that made it feel less like nostalgia and more like a living thing. For anybody keeping a running list of where each song comes from, Cover You and a number of the other more recent tracks are featured on Love Made Me Do It, the bands independently released album that landed on January 31, 2025.
Lightning in a Bottle, (Love Made Me Do It), and Devil on My Shoulder, (Missing Person), the latter a sharp, compact rock single first officially surfaced in 2020, now showed Kelsy as both songwriter and frontperson who knows how to make the show a conversation.
Lightning in a Bottle had the band hitting a tight four-to-the-floor drive; some of the crowd started to clap in time, and for a song that might read as jaunty on record, it became here the sort of communal singalong that warms the floor. Devil on My Shoulder, a darker, more compact nugget from the Missing Person era, let Kelsy open up the vocals and stretch the melody into a widescreen moment; when she let the last line hang, the arena swallowed and then returned it like an echo.
Closing with Liquor Store On Mars, (Missing Person), a track that’s been a live favourite for some time, she brought out a guest, or at least the vibe of one, in a cameo vocal trade that hinted at her collaborations (there’s an acoustic version that featured Adam Slack her partner and Struts guitarist, on previous releases) and the band left the stage with the room properly warmed.
The Heroines had done what openers should: not merely been a preface but a full chapter, and one that planted hooks into the crowd for later.
If Kelsy’s set had been about image, melody and the wide arc of rock-pop theatrics, Bloodywood were the pivot from polished glamour to an absolutely kinetic, culturally-60Hz electricity. The Indian six-piece (strictly: Bloodywood, the New Delhi-born outfit that made a name fusing traditional Indian music with heavy metal, has been touring hard since their rise in 2016) arrived in full colour: stage fabrics, kurtas and Bhangra-style flourishes threaded through leather and studs, a visual fuse that matched the music’s hybrid energy.
Their new record, Nu Delhi (stylised as such), arrived earlier in 2025 and was the spine of their set; tracks like Gaddaar and Aaj have entered their live set not as singles but as statements, political, rhythmic, and muscular. The album itself was announced and released in March 2025 and the band have been carrying its songs across European arenas since.
Bloodywood’s program was exactly what you’d hope, a concise six-song hit of identity and adrenaline: G-A-D-D-A-A-R (often written as “Gaddaar”), Aaj, Dana Dan, Bekhauf, New Delhi (presented in their stylised form on record as “Nu Delhi”), and the final anthem M-A-C-H-I B-H-A-S-A-D (spelled out and labelled “Machi Bhasad (Expect a Riot)” in most printed set lists).
Live, the band’s structure is deceptively simple: Karan Katiyar’s guitars are heavily downturned when they need to be, chiselled and low in the mix, but interleaved with samples and folk instrumentation; Jayant Bhadula’s vocals chop between a gritty, angry growl and a smooth, clean chant; backing electronics and programming dress the riffs in modernity so the old and the new sit comfortably on top of each other.
The percussive engine, the dhol, tabla, and occasionally a hand-drum figure that the band’s touring percussionist would strike with sticks, gave tracks like Dana Dan a bouncy, almost celebratory propulsion even as the guitars slashed. That contrast, the euphoric Bhangra swing against a wall of metal, is the Bloodywood signature and it’s stunning in a big room: the dhol’s woody crack cuts through the PA, and the crowd responds to that pulse the way people do to a bass drop.
Gaddaar (Rak Shak), opened the set proper and immediately set a tone. It’s an unflinching political number that sounds like a protest amplified by the kind of riffs that make fists rise; the audience reacted with head bobbing, it was hard not too and some even joined in with the chants, this is Birmingham don’t forget, and you could see pockets of fans singing back lyrics I doubt many of them had memorised that morning, the band’s communal resonance is international now.
Aaj (Rak Shak), kept the momentum tight, offering a melodic chorus that invited sing-back; if you’d seen them in smaller venues, you’d recognise how they scale the intimacy. Dana Dan (Rak Shak), was the brutal turn: pounding, aggressive, a song that on record hits hard but live becomes a physical, living beast, its lyrical subject and rhythmic aggression made the floor lurch, seismically, the guitar tone on the heavier parts was a near-perfect blend of modern nu-metal heft with an Indian melodic sensibility.
Bekhauf’s (Nu Delhi), live delivery was notable for a guest vocal on the record (their version of Bekhauf features guest spots in some editions), but onstage there was a swagger and a moment where the band leaned into showmanship, horns through the PA and an instrumental break built for dancing and headbanging simultaneously.
Nu Delhi (Nu Delhi), itself felt like a love-letter and a rally-cry to their city; the band’s use of nagara drums and sitar-like textures (played or sampled) made the chorus resonate like a hymn for a younger, angrier generation of Delhi. The set-closer Machi Bhasad (Rak Shak), was exactly the kind of riotous, fist-raising finale that leaves sweat on T-shirts and a ringing in the ears; when they launched into the chorus the entire arena surged to meet it.
The band’s stage outfits, a modern take on Bhangra regalia, embroidered and bright but cut for movement, made every jump and spin into a small pageant, and you left the set feeling energised and culturally uplifted. The press packages and reviews that accompanied Nu Delhi’s March release have been explicit about the album’s blend of instruments and the band’s deliberate cultural reclamation; tonight, live, all of that theory translated into visceral fun.
By the time Bloodywood finished, the atmosphere in the arena had been recalibrated. You could feel anticipation, not merely for the headline but for the experience. Halestorm’s nEVEREST tour has been engineered to be that kind of climax since the band announced Everest earlier in the year; their sixth studio album, Everest, dropped in August 2025 and the songs have slotted into their setlist with an immediacy that suggests this is a band in fierce command of its identity.
Reviews of Everest called it ambitious and cinematic, and the record’s sequencing (Fallen Star into Everest, Rain Your Blood On Me, Broken Doll, K-I-L-L-I-N-G) has had the effect of giving the live show both peaks and a narrative spine. The band’s touring page and multiple ticketing outlets had the November 23 date listed with Bloodywood and Kelsy as supports, and setlist records from the run show the group folding new songs and old favourites into a set that feels like a greatest-hits conversation with a current record that wants to be heard now.
Halestorm began their set the way modern arena rock bands have learnt to: with a theatrical preface. The stage went dark, the house lights pinched down, with an ominous curtain across the front of the stage.
The band stood behind, Black Sabbath throbbed from the speakers. Behind the curtain, Halestorm’s silhouetted imagery could be seen as they rocked out this legendary nod to Birmingham’s great hero, the opening riffs exploded, as the curtain gave way to a monumental scream of light, smoke and a fiery Lzzy Hale, the crowd were instantly light in their loafers as the arena surged to the anthem. When Fallen Star’s slow-burn intro broke the blackout, the band hit the room with the predatory confidence of seasoned arena pros.
Fallen Star, which opens the Everest album, was perfect live: it let Lzzy Hale build the vocal; it let Arejay Hale stretch his kit dynamics from soft toms to absolute thunder; and it painted the set’s emotional topography. Lzzy’s voice, in the arena’s acoustic, was astonishingly present, raw, and occasionally ragged in the best, human way that gives rock its grit. The production values were high, no surprise, given the tour, but the performance never felt overproduced. There was strategy and muscle in every song.
The band dropped into I Miss the Misery and the tempo shifted into Halestorm’s classic centre: tight metal grooves with a pop sensibility in the chorus that makes audiences involuntarily sing along. Confetti canons shot ticker tape across the crowd, flame billowed from the stage both front and back, this was a massive production, move over KISS, we have a worthy successor here. Love Bites (So Do I), the early Grammy-winning single that helped define their mainstream moment, came later and landed with the kind of crowd carnality only an arena-sized earworm can create: thousands of voices leaning into the chorus like someone blowing on a hot coal.
WATCH OUT! and I Get Off quickly followed, and those songs are Halestorm in peak arena form, brash, immediate and with guitar tones that cut like razors. There was a moment early on where the band played a little with the audience dynamic, dropping the instruments for a heartbeat and letting the crowd fill the harmonic space; it’s a trick that feels trite if overused but, in this set served as a reminder that Halestorm still knows how to command silence as well as noise.
The Everest material came next. Broken Doll and Like a Woman Can carried weight and tension, providing Lzzy with a canvas for both aggression and nuance. Every vocal inflection was mirrored by the audience, a call-and-response not just of sound but of emotional resonance. How Will You Remember Me? Introduced as a tribute to those we have lost this year, including the formidable Ozzy; functioned as a quiet-loud transition, where the arena itself seemed to exhale, absorbing the melodic phrasing before exploding into the choruses. I Am the Fire, another Everest single, erupted like molten lava: guitars screamed, bass thundered, drums roared, and Lzzy’s voice soared, commanding both attention and awe. The ritualistic moment of the night arrived with a teasing excerpt of Familiar Taste of Poison.
During which, cape wearing, Lzzy took a moment to address the room, a short speech that never devolved into platitude, and then, in a touch that felt both ritualistic and rock-and-roll dramatic, she drank from a small ornate goblet and tossed it into the crowd. For a band whose image has often straddled homage and originality, that action was a flourish that felt equal parts Victorian melodrama and stadium rock spectacle; simultaneously gothic, theatrical, and rock’n’roll, a flourish that perfectly captured Halestorm’s stagecraft ethos: blending spectacle with sincerity
This was a clear chapter where Everest material dominated. Like a diamond in the set, Rain Your Blood On Me, one of the Everest singles that preceded the album proper, was given a near-ritual treatment. Lzzy held the mic like a herald, Arejay launched the drum salvo, and for a moment the band and audience seemed to move as one organism. During Rain Your Blood On Me, an extended drum-focused passage led to what Arejay called a “drum mosh pit”, he announced it as a first, challenged the crowd, and then proceeded to play like a man possessed, eventually bringing out oversized sticks and coaxing the floor into a kind of percussive surge. The crowd obliged as only a Birmingham audience could: rowdy, willing and with that naughty edge of participation that makes a live performance feel communal. The drum moment segued into Freak Like Me and then Mz Hyde, and Halestorm’s ability to flip dynamics, huge choruses into whispered verses, grit into sheen, was on full display.
I can’t overstate how theatrical the middle of the set was. There were confetti moments, but they were used sparingly and often at structural points to underline emotional beats. Back into Rain Your Blood On Me and then into a drum solo that bled into Arge (Arejay) commanding the sticks and inviting participation, the tempo lifted, the stage filled with light, and the floor rose like a single breath. The drum mosh pit bit could have been gimmicky but it wasn’t: it landed as authentic crowd-play, because Arejay’s invitation was so obviously genuine.
There were quieter, more affecting moments: Broken Doll and Like a Woman Can allowed the band to show texture in a way their radio hits rarely require. How Will You Remember Me? landed as the kind of closer-that-isn’t-a-closer, a track that asked the audience a question before answering with a chorus loud enough to rattle the arena’s skin. The new album’s K-I-L-L-I-N-G and Uncomfortable slotted into the set in a way that felt natural: the band did not overplay the new, they gently integrated it. I Gave You Everything, which the crowd took to with a tenderness that was almost surprising after the evening’s prior brutality, closed the main set. it’s delicate, melancholic sweep contrasted with the prior chaos, the arena absorbing the subtlety, with hushed anticipation giving way to collective emotion, the thrill of communal release. The lights softened, and as the band left the stage, the crowd erupted in chants for the inevitable encore, their voices thick with excitement and reverence, but still the band left, momentarily.
The encore leaned into both reverence and joy. They returned with Perry Mason, the Ozzy Osbourne cover, which began as a respectful salute to the metal god and then pivoted into full-on party mode; the audience sang the words to Ozzy’s echo as if the band had handed them a torch. There was a clear moment of homage, an apology to the canon, then a reassertion of identity, followed by Here’s To Us, a perfect crowd-raiser that Halestorm have long used to generate a communal chorus that feels like a stadium-wide inside joke. The night’s final curtain truly fell with Everest’s title track: Everest. The title track’s sonic sweep, paired with stage smoke and Lzzy’s voice at peak intensity, left the room buzzing and oddly sentimental, the kind of conclusion that made people linger in their seats long after the lights came up. The production team’s timing on the cannons was immaculate: the confetti hung in the arena’s air like a snowstorm of applause. It was climactic, Confetti cannons, streamers, and the sort of glinting aftermath that makes you spend an hour after the show picking paper out of your hair
There are always technical and human bits that make a show feel alive. The sound mix at bp pulse was generally strong; lows had weight (which benefitted Bloodywood’s low-end dhol and Halestorm’s bottom-heavy riffing) and vocals were placed forward enough to make Lzzy’s subtle phrasing audible even from the higher tiers. There were moments, as with any arena show, where midrange cluttered (a side-effect of the venue’s sound geometry), but the engineers rode those peaks well and the band’s on-stage energy carried the room irrespective.
Instrumentally, tonight was a showcase: Arejay’s drum dynamics (from whispered tom rolls to full-tilt cymbal slams) felt like a soloist’s conversation with the crowd; Joe Hottinger’s guitar (Halestorm) swung from serrated power chords to a shimmering, reverb-tacked lead when the song demanded it; Karan Katiyar (Bloodywood) balanced metal chugs with Indian ornamentations; and Kelsy’s guitars were the perfect foil to her vocal persona, tidy, supportive, and occasionally mischievous in their fills.
As for crowd reaction, Birmingham gave everything you’d expect: polite before the show, riotous at the proper call-and-response moments, and quietly reverent at the saddish, singable bits. There were mosh pits at Bloodywood’s heavier passages and during Halestorm’s more aggressive songs; there were also those big, arena-wide waves of singing you only get when a band plays across generations, people who’d brought their teenage kids and teenagers who’d dragged their parents along.
After the show, in the bars spilling out into the cold November air, conversations were a steady, satisfied churn about the drum mosh pit, Lzzy’s goblet trick, the confetti, and Bloodywood’s irresistible choreography of cultural fusion. That, in itself, felt like a micro-review of the night: people talking less in track-by-track but more in emotional beats.
If you needed a catalogue to anchor each song, who released what and when, here’s a tidy reference woven into the memory of the night: Kelsy Karter’s God Knows I’ve Tried and Devil On My Shoulder come from her early period and the Missing Person album era (Missing Person released October 2, 2020), while several of the songs she played (Cover You, Laser to the Heart, Liquor Store on Mars) appear on her 2025 record Love Made Me Do It and in her catalogue of singles spanning 2018–2023.
Bloodywood’s set pulled heavily from Nu Delhi (released March 21, 2025) and their earlier Rakshak album (released February 18, 2022), the latter being the record that first detonated them on to international radars.
Halestorm’s Everest dropped August 8, 2025, and its tracks sat alongside older anthems from Halestorm (2009), The Strange Case Of… (2012), Into The Wild life (2015 ) and Vicious (2018) from there studio records; their Everest-era songs, Fallen Star, Rain Your Blood On Me, K-I-L-L-I-N-G, I Gave You Everything, all felt like a live authentication to a band that’s evolving rather than repeating.
An appraisal of the night you might well ask, here it is then, in blunt instrument form: So…. there’s something advantageous about a three-band night where each act retains identity, technique and ambition. Kelsy Karter & The Heroines opened with a wink and a knife, poised, pop-savvy and charismatic in a way that could seed headline runs of their own. Bloodywood’s set was an electric fuse of cultural pride and sonic force, proof that hybridisation of folk and metal can be both respectful and stadium-ready. Halestorm, the reason so many of us had come, were calculated and incendiary; the new Everest material sat comfortably beside older hits, and their stagecraft married spectacle to sincerity. Each band left marks on the room: Kelsy’s sweetness and bruised honesty, Bloodywood’s convulsive jubilation, Halestorm’s theatrical, pyrotechnic catharsis. It’s the rare night where the opener doesn’t get swallowed, the support isn’t a mere placeholder, and the headliner delivers something that feels like a reward rather than a predictable checklist. For that reason, and many others, the drum solos, the confetti snowfall, the cultural mash-ups and the goblet toss, this gig will stay in the memory for a while, gig of the year? Well, let’s put it this way, it’s got very few competitors that’s for sure!
