The imagery of the sea has been used by storytellers throughout history to convey a sense of fear of the unknown and of dread of the dangers that lurk below the waves. It’s a place where monsters live and storms batter the traveller. You take your life in your hands when you journey across it, and from the shore you look out over it and wonder what lies beneath the waves and beyond the horizon. 

So, the Tsunami Sea is a place of doubt, of fear and danger, and of monsters. The record was always an intimate and personal expression of anxieties, frustration, insecurity and self-doubt, but now it’s presented with imagery that gives context to the songs and a sense of accomplishment and even closure for the band. Lead singer Courtney LaPlante has said many times that their music is the way she and guitarist (and husband) Michael Stringer express the things they aren’t able to say out loud. Only now it seems that they’ve used their experiences in the 18 months since the album was released to create visuals that express a confidence which might have been lacking back then. It’s like they’ve crossed the sea and finally believe in themselves.

And what a ride it must have been for Spiritbox. In only 4 years, they’ve gone from playing the 800-capacity Islington Academy to touring stadia around the world, which undeniably makes them one of the standard-bearers for the next generation of heavy music headliners. They’re joined on this tour by Jinjer, who are no strangers to the bigger venues themselves, and long-time touring partners Dying Wish. These 3 bands share certain characteristics, but over the course of the evening it’s abundantly clear that each brings something very different to the others. 

Dying Wish open with “I Don’t Belong Anywhere”, the first track from their 2025 album Flesh Stays Together. The album marked a turn towards a harder edged, more aggressive style and this shows in the reaction of the crowd. From the start, the security team have their hands full dealing with a near tidal wave of fans passing across the barricade, goaded by bassist Jon Mackey. And this energy keeps up throughout the set as the band rattles through a selection of songs from their albums and singles catalogue. While they generally sit squarely in the metalcore scream-verses/smooth-chorus camp, you can hear that harder edge coming through in the more recent tracks – singer Emma Boster’s scream sections turning more deathcore than metalcore at times. They’re not a band to shy away from saying what they think and the unflinching lyrics are matched by heavy riffs and brutal breakdowns. They finish with “I’ll Know You’re Not Around”, a high point from their most recent album, leaving the audience’s adrenaline levels suitably elevated.

Jinjer’s set showcases the breadth and inventiveness of their music. Anchored by a hyper-technical rhythm section, guitarist Roman Ibramkhalilov and lead singer Tatiana Shmailyuk bring a prog-infused, operatic level of lyrical and musical storytelling to their performance. Always charismatic on stage, Tatiana’s remarkable vocals have such a contrast between their soft and hard elements that they’re undeniably the dominant feature of the band’s music – possibly more so than any singer in the genre. It’s beautiful and brutal at the same time and the songs they play tonight showcase every aspect of the band’s skilful, complex songwriting. Almost inevitably though, it’s “Pisces” that becomes the biggest singalong of the evening so far. It’s perhaps their most accessible and “conventional” track, but it’s also from an album that is 10 years old. There’s little doubt that they’ve moved on from that time and have evolved a style that compels you to listen to their work again and again to get the most out of its variety and intensity. 

As Courtney says mid-way through Spiritbox’s set, there are so many ways for heavy bands to express themselves in their music. It’s an acknowledgement of just how different the artists performing tonight are. The formula may superficially seem very similar – heavy riffs, massive breakdowns and clean/scream vocals delivered by 3 incredibly talented female vocalists – but there are vast open spaces between the bands musically. And these spaces are perhaps even more evident listening to them back-to-back in a live setting. 

Emerging from behind a white mist on the prow of a classical square-rigged ship, Courtney and Spiritbox launch into “Fata Morgana”, the brutal opening track from Tsunami Sea. Used in folklore and by writers to symbolise empty hopes and unfulfilled dreams, a Fata Morgana is a seafaring mirage – a castle in the air that disappears when approached, usually leading to disaster. Like so many of the tracks on the album, it’s representative of a key theme running through Tsunami Sea: What if all of this (success) is all just an illusion? 

In similar terms, the idea of “what if I don’t measure up?” continues in the third song on the setlist, “Perfect Soul”. “My dreams are just a fantasy/And that is all they’ll ever be/I turn the lights out on a thousand eyes/All watching waiting.” The song works on several levels, but it’s as a personal expression of the helplessness felt in the disparity between who you are and who you think a person wants you to be where it really hits hard.  

Always a fan favourite, “Soft Spine” is delivered with customary venom. “This is for all the people you hate…” screams Courtney as she launches into the song. It’s a howl of rage and fury at the monsters that lurk beyond direct sight and it clearly hits the mark with the audience. She prowls the stage and 10,000+ voices scream back: “You stole the echo from their ghosts/You pick your teeth with sacred bones/I hate the ones that love you/And those who profit from you/It’s time to reap the tide you sow.” 

But it’s not the loudest crowd response of the evening. That’s reserved for “Holy Roller”, from their 2021 debut album Eternal Blue. It’s another masterclass in heavy, high-tempo aggression, railing against religion as an abusive trap rather than salvation. Like Soft Spine, there are no clean vocals in this one. It’s pure anger and vengeance and the crowd loves it.

The sense of fear and dread connected with the sea has always been felt more strongly by island peoples and it’s a theme that LaPlante references towards the end of the performance. At one point, she draws a parallel between Vancouver Island – the “…strange little island Michael and I grew up on…” – and the UK. It’s a conscious expression of kinship with the audience that echoes the sense of confidence the band now projects. Where once she might have been a bit distant on stage, Courtney’s now happy to interact directly with the crowd: “Who here is in a band?” she asks as at least 10% of the audience raise their hands. 

In the end, it’s not the imagery or nautical references, or the relaxed and confident performance, that stand out. It’s the sense that the band has crossed a line. As Courtney says, they’re done with the hurt and the pain they were dealing with when they wrote the album and are ready for a new era. That they feel they’ve journeyed safely to the other side of the Tsunami Sea is evident from the image of a lighthouse projected on the stage during the final track, new single “Mourning”. Whether they’ve landed safely in a promised land or another Fata Morgana will be interesting to discover. 

Words and photos by James Mitchell