The show opened with drummer Antti Halonen walking onto the stage alone and launching into a powerful standing drum performance, hitting the snare and toms like battle drums. This immediately caught my attention and had me completely focused on the stage from the very beginning. Vocalist Aleksi Paasonen has a strong live presence and is an expressive vocalist. He interacted with the crowd right from the beginning and tried to get people moshing and the pit going. After a couple of songs people had warmed up enough to actually start pitting, moshing more and the crowd seemed more relaxed.

The rest of the band didn’t stand out as much for me, though. I would have liked the guitars to stand out more and to hear them more clearly. Maybe this was more of a venue problem for this kind of proggy music and had less to do with the sound engineering. Clearly the band has a strong fanbase, since the venue was crowded from the start even on a Sunday evening.

Northane started their set with the energetic ‘4D’, and the crowd immediately exploded. The energy quickly spread like an explosive fire to the rest of the audience as well, including those who had still been standing in the back. The set consisted mostly of songs from their latest albums ‘Obsidian’ and ‘Alien’, but they also played an older song ‘Mesmer’ as well as two singles, ‘Evian’ and ‘CUT_it’, from their upcoming album ‘Anemonia’ (release date 30/10/2026).

At some point the vocalist Marcus Bridge asked the crowd how many had seen them before and how many were seeing them for the first time. More hands went up for those seeing them for the first time, which to me means that they have gathered a lot of new fans since the release of ‘Alien’ and ‘Obsidian’, which are more electronic albums compared to their previous ones. This change in their style has definitely been successful at drawing more listeners, myself included.
The rest of the band works seamlessly together, even after several lineup changes throughout the band’s history. While they all seem to be in their own world focused on their own instruments, everything comes together really well. The whole band is energetic, and that energy just pulls you in.

The whole show had the crowd singing along, moshpits going on all the time, and crowd surfing with even 2-3 people at the same time. I had a bit of a struggle not to go in there myself, but for the last 3 songs I went straight into the middle of the crowd’s moshpit and circle pit. At some point, the vocalist Marcus asked the crowd to squat down on the floor and jump in the air at the same time. Then BOOM, and the whole floor was on fire!

Northlane is a band where the live crowd eats from their hand and keeps asking for more. You can’t leave a Northlane show without having at least a grin on your face and at least a little bit of sweat.