LIVE REVIEW: grandson @ O2 Forum Kentish Town, London
It’s not often that a headliner is forced to make an impossible decision before a single note has been played, but on March 2nd 2026, GRANDSON walked onto the O2 Forum Kentish Town stage already carrying a weight that had nothing to do with the topics on his setlist. Cheers curdled and turned into silence when GRANDSON spoke with a sombre tone, and told a sold-out, tense-with-anticipation crowd that his surprise special guest, the controversial BOB VYLAN (a British duo who were supposed to support him on his North America tour but had their visas blocked due to their outspoken anti-Zionist statements at Glastonbury Festival) had been barred from even entering the building by venue security.
Anticipation from the crowd turned into boos and dismay, and you could feel the seething in GRANDSON’s words as he laid out the binary choice forced upon him earlier that evening: to stand on his morals regarding censorship and free speech and walk away from thousands of his own fans, or swallow the bitter pill and give the people in front of him the show that they’d paid for. He chose the latter, but made damn sure the weight of that decision was openly in the air for the rest of the show. It was a brutal, transparent start that framed everything that followed not as escapism, but as necessary confrontation.
Before the turmoil, PINKSHIFT did exactly what a support band at this level should do: they made the room smaller and hotter. They’ve clearly outgrown the ‘Baltimore’s best kept secret’ tag, as the crowd’s cheers got louder and louder as their set went on. Hailing from just an hour outside DC, there was an open, dangerous edge to their stage banter: they didn’t just allude to the administration or Israel’s bombings of Palestine; they name it, at their own personal risk. In a room about to be headlined by an artist who was about to announce that he just had his guest censored, this felt like a necessary act of resistance.
PINKSHIFT’s grungy pop-punk sound feels like being shoved into a locker and viciously having to fight your way out – it’s urgent, heavy, and wields a rage that continues to crack the foundations of a traditionally male, white scene. Their lead singer Ashrita Kumar is a riveting focal point, a transmasc non-binary presence bouncing across the stage with the kind of kinetic, unhinged passion that makes you feel safe in your own fury. Their vocal cords were a tad flat at times, but that rawness only added to the authenticity as they shredded through the political static and personal anxieties that define their work. (In the best way possible) the band itself looked like they’d been plucked from the pages of a ‘woke diversity handbook’; a rhythm guitarist with the vibes of a cool uncle flanked by a gaggle of two-stepping, fresh-out-of-high-school members. Every detail of the songs mattered – drummer Myron Houngbedji hit so hard during one explosive fill that a stick went flying clean out of his holder, a small but telling sign of the commitment on display. The lead guitarist hid a beautiful, underused voice beneath a chin-length fringe that screamed ‘OG scene kid,’ but his nimble fingers carved out fast sharp riffs that cut through the noise.
PINKSHIFT were one of the most apt support bookings imaginable for GRANDSON, and they sealed that connection by carving out a “no men allowed” pit and a mini wall of death. Between the distortion, they made clear this was a safe space, a room for the marginalised and the pissed-off. It was a vital warm-up for what was to follow.
Rating: 8/10
If PINKSHIFT was the kindling, GRANDSON was the controlled burn. The shadow of the BOB VYLAN incident loomed over the set, but rather than trying to shake it, GRANDSON used it as an accelerant. By his own admission, he is, at his core, a conduit for frustration, and with the wound of the venue’s censorship still fresh, the performance that followed was less a concert and more of a civic exorcism for the crowd. The Inertia material felt extra apocalyptic in this setting, definitely designed for the mosh pit with heavy, glitchy, beats and scathing critical lyrics. Yet, despite all the rage left in the space of these songs, the true moment of gravity arrived in the quiet before the storm with Heather, an emotional ballad dedicated to a fan lost to suicide. There is a specific, gut-wrenching weight to hearing a room full of strangers fall silent, thinking about the people left behind in the throes of depression. It was a lullaby for the grieving, and watching Jordan deliver it with his eyes squeezed shut made it feel like a eulogy for more than just the song’s subject, and became the emotional anchor of the entire set.
The set was not all frustration and outrage – that’s the strange alchemy that GRANDSON has perfected. Songs like Autonomous Delivery Robot and Riptide are more tongue and cheek, taking pain and turning it into something uplifting. He manifests absolute chaos: the waves of crowd surfers were constant, the pit swirled without encouragement, and the energy was palpable. But, as with most shows in this genre, it’s a rage held within a strict moral container, where GRANDSON paused repeatedly to enforce the only rule that matters at his shows: to take care of one other. His view of these concerts are that they aren’t just gigs, but more of a communal venting session where the goal is to leave with less emotional baggage, not more bruises. Grandkids can scream about the world burning here because they know the person next to them will pick them up if they fall.
The only minor fracture in the evening’s armour was the production. Given the scale of the emotion on display and the sheer size of the Inertia soundscape, the visual presentation felt a little too grounded. Some deeper atmospheric staging or something to match the cinematic scope of his newer, heavier direction would have elevated this from a great rock show to a truly transcendental one.
Rating: 9/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in London from Sarah Tsang here:
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