ninehertz

I started 2025 with an aim to attend as many gigs as possible. Even though my city of Sheffield saw a thriving gig landscape which allowed for the prospect of an arbitrary aim of a gig per week average, I didn’t think I’d actually manage it, but ended having attended 58 in total.

Across these I witnessed 165 sets by 150 bands, from 13 countries; I visited 25 venues in 5 cities or towns. A shout out to the promoters – I have done it, briefly, and it is stressful. The competition for nights out is strong, the demands of venues can be taxing, keeping ticket prices down to attract attendees whilst ensuring you pay the bands a headache-inducing impossible balance. Support them, support the scene – attend gigs, buy tickets in advance, share flyers online.

I don’t write live reviews because I think of the gig experience as a personal one, the conditions that make a gig great or not are myriad and can be unrelated to the band – who you attend with, the weather, the venue, what or how much you drink, if you had a bad day at work, where you went before or after. An end of year list feels like a good time for an exception. This took me much longer than I’d anticipated to settle on, but I finally got there – my Top 10 sets from the year.

10. Rat Cage – Sheffield, Lughole – 12th August

I can still picture Rat Cage from that night back in August, bounding around the stage, punk as it should be – savage and fun with a tight sound. The Lughole has always been the centre of the Sheffield punk scene, but the way they have handed the baton over to newer generations is inspiring and seeing it thrive more than ever. It was a guaranteed good night there regardless of who was on all year.

Rat Cage are my pick of Sheffield band sets this year but I could easily have chosen many more here. Pohl’s conversion to a three piece has somehow made them even better, from a position of one of my favourite bands anywhere already, and 2026 will be an even brighter one for them. Baosbheinn grew inexorably, a band transformed into a serious force. And then there were (to select just a handful) amazing sets by Blind Monarch, Mouths, Ye Woodbeast, Duck and Naisian. Sheffield is an exciting place to be for music right now.

9. Population II – Sheffield, The Washington – 28th January

Starved of gigs as is often the way early in a year, I cast my net wider than usual in January, heading to a regular indie night in the city centre pub The Washington. A flyer promised psych of some order but I was sceptical and knew little until Population II hit the stage. Then the Québécois band really took me by surprise, a lively, rocking, fun set of garage rock psychedelia. An unexpectedly excellent night.

8. Greet – Sheffield, Sidney & Matilda – 23rd August

If I had to name the theme of my musical year, it would almost certainly centre around folk drone, in a time when I saw amazing sets by A-Sun Amissa, Rún and Thraa, adored the Haress record and voted Smote as my album of 2025, it has been an eye-opening adventure into this wildly inventive and beautiful music. Live, the best of all was Greet, in the middle of a denim and sweat saturated trad metal and doom festival, creating something that took those in attendance out of the basement stage and into another world altogether. It was so delicate, so touching, half an hour where you forget everything other than this craft. One of the other ninehertz crew with me told me after it nearly moved them to tears.

This in amongst the enormous and hugely successful Cosmic Vibration festival we’re lucky to have in Sheffield, across two days and two stages. Greet were the highlight, but there was a feast of bands I enjoyed also – Molch, Lucid Sins and The Kryss Talmeth Experiment most of all.

7. Nine Inch Nails – Manchester, Co-Op Live – 17th June

There has seemingly been a surge of big name band tours in the last year or so – reunion or otherwise; those from our scene like Kylesa or Acid Bath, or larger alternative behemoths of the 90s such as Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones and Weezer. I viewed them slightly interested, slightly cynical, but when my mum rang me unexpectedly asking if we should go see Nine Inch Nails at the new enormous and built dedicated to hosting live music Co-Op Live in Manchester together, I thought… why not? I went in unsure of what to expect, but left exhilarated.

It was my first time seeing Reznor since 2000 (at Glastonbury) and my first big arena scale since Sabbath many years back. It was a true spectacle – the light show, the changes between the electro, metal and techno sets and stages was incredible and of course the songs – The Perfect Drug, Wish, Hurt and March of the Pigs a magical, transporting experience.

6. Sly & the Family Drone – Sheffield, CADS – 24th May

Sly & the Family Drone remain the most entertaining live band in the UK, maybe only challenged by Ashenspire. When they rock up in your town, you drop everything to go, as we did in May, for a fairly short notice booked gig at the impressive Creative Arts Development Space. If you know of them you’ll know – if not, imagine a band dissecting a number of drumkits across the middle of the venue, amps stacked high, synths and effects tables dotted between, with audience participation encouraged and band members treating their equipment like an adventure playground. It was, as always, an invigorating experience.

5. The Grey – Sheffield, Sidney & Matilda – 17th May

Some sets just transcend expectation or rationale, a highlight not due to the occasion or build up, nor even because they’re your favourite band – sometimes a band turns up and is so tight, so loud and so good it instantly leaves a lasting impression all on its own. That was The Grey this day, ostensibly a post-metal band – a genre I’m not fond of – but undeniably incredible and crushingly heavy. I’ve seen them before and they are consistently this good. Ever touring, or so it seems, don’t miss out when they play near you.

A word on Sidney & Matilda, a three gig-room venue with nice bar and outside area – it’s been around for a while but growing all the time, at least one gig on there every night it seems. Sheffield has been blessed with great and numerous venues this year – I saw bands in eighteen different pubs and clubs here this year alone. Whilst the Leadmill was lost to development, the independent, underground and pop up venues flourished.

4. A Horse Called War – Sheffield, Zephyrs – 3rd October

Twenty years since they formed, A Horse Called War gallop onwards. They’ve never been a consistent presence – three releases in that time tells a story – but they remain an almighty sludge force. This gig in a tiny dive bar was proof – only Moloch in UK sludge could challenge them that will night for sheer unforgiving ferocious sludge, a powerhouse showing to remind everyone present that A Horse Called War are still as good as this music gets.

3. Druidess – Glossop, The Globe – 26th July

I’m Glossop born and raised (and The Globe was where I spent plenty of days), but never knew it as a gig destination, beyond friends' cover bands in my teens, then or in the decades since I moved away. That changed this year in spectacular fashion. Promoters of noise, drone, doom and heavy psych suddenly all started putting gigs on – big and small – so I took the opportunity to return home regularly – and introduced my mum to a host of great bands too. Beyond those on this list, I could easily have featured the Glossop visits of Big|Brave, Dead Sea Apes, She the Throne, Moloch, Lauren Mason & A-Sun Anissa, Thraa or Firefriend here.

When Druidess played back in July I knew of them only through a song or two, but they were a revelation. When I attended Cosmic Vibration a few weeks later they were then the band I was most looking forward to across two days full of doom. They reminded me of Blood Ceremony at their peak, proto-doom played raucously. I’m hoping a debut album appears in 2026.

2. Witch Club Satan – Birmingham, Institute – 30th August

As their set came to a close, one of our party turned to us and exclaimed “what the fuck was that?!” It was an expression of complete shock of what we had been witness to. Witch Club Satan are a band like no other, live and in the flesh in particular. There’s increasing hype around them but it is entirely justified.

Supersonic Festival remains the high mark for experimental, eclectic and extreme music in the UK. I originally wasn’t able to attend but when diaries changed, I got a day ticket at a week’s notice and headed to Birmingham. Alongside generally having a load of fun with friends, some incredible vegan food throughout the day and a so-bad-it's-good horror film showing in the early afternoon, I was graced with a multitude of incredible sets – Meatdripper, Karl D'Silva and Rún in particular.

Witch Club Satan stole the show. It was a ferocious, authentic, feminist-rage black metal spectacle, the audio and visual combining to a all-sensory treat that was bewildering and battering. As the applause died down, the whole audience felt collectively stunned, no-one quite sure how to take in what they had seen, smiles plastered to every face and knowledge that the set would be remembered for many years.

1. Thou – Glossop, The Globe – 12th April

It would have to take an extraordinary set of circumstances and music to beat that. And that’s what somehow culminated back in April. Back then, the Glossop revolution hadn’t yet taken off. So when I hear Thou – my favourite band Thou – are touring, supported (as ever) by the best live sludge band in the UK Moloch, I have my fingers crossed for a Sheffield date, ready to work out where I am travelling to if not. What I didn’t expect was to find Glossop on there.

There are reasons why a band of the calibre and following of Thou (and Big|Brave later in the year) ended up there, which I won’t go into here (except to say thank you to those who made it possible), but regardless – I couldn’t believe my eyes. This is my hometown. The Globe is a small traditional pub, save for a decades long vegan only food menu that has brought them some acclaim, and the upstairs venue is something like 60 capacity.

On the day, settled at my parents’ house ahead of the gig having travelled the winding Snake Pass early, a worry enters my mind – I’ve built this up to be a special gig so much that it probably can’t meet expectations. I vow to enjoy myself come what may. I needn’t have worried. Moloch were at their bulldozing best and then Thou produced one of my most memorable sets ever. Stood in that place, of my youth, taking in the improbability of it all, the hairs on my arms standing on end as they play into the Marshlands… it was a pure, emotional, moment of joy, that only live music can bring.