LIVE REVIEW: Ómoia & Monochrome @ The Exchange, Bristol

With arena shows becoming increasingly bloated, ticket prices spiralling into the absurd, it’s almost baffling more people haven’t retreated back into the underbelly of live music. Because for a mere £6.50, nights like this still exist: sweat-drenched, rib-rattling, and crammed into a 60-capacity room where tomorrow’s headliners cut their teeth right in front of you.
Tonight, it’s the basement of The Exchange in Bristol: low ceiling, thick air, and a lineup co-headlined by homegrown metalcore outfit MONOCHROME and Leeds’ queer emos ÓMOIA. A night that trades polish for raw, unfiltered intent.

Bristol’s own HAMARTIA are tasked with cracking the night open, and they do so with a set that feels tightly coiled yet constantly threatening to spill over. There’s a restless energy to it, something simmering just beneath the surface, where precision meets emotional volatility in a way that keeps you locked in. You can trace the DNA if you want: fleeting echoes of AS EVERYTHUNG UNFOLDS, flashes of PARAMORE, but it never lingers long enough to feel borrowed. Instead, it reshapes itself into something sharper, more immediate: a collision of soaring, melodic hooks and serrated edges, delivered with a sense of urgency that borders on cathartic release.

It’s unmistakably a home town show, and the room wears that proudly. The front rows are packed with familiar faces, voices ringing out just that bit louder, arms reaching just that bit higher, every lyric met with recognition and response. But rather than diluting the impact, it feeds it, turning the set into something communal. And it moves fast, almost disarmingly so. Their 25-minute set tears through the room in what feels like half that time, each track bleeding into the next with barely a moment to breathe. By the time it ends, there’s no sense of closure: only the lingering feeling that you’ve caught a glimpse of something still unfolding, something not yet fully realised. Not a full statement, but a promise.

Rating: 9/10

The only outsiders geographically by the way of Leeds, but not in spirit, ÓMOIA step into the room with the kind of presence that suggests ownership rather than introduction: like they’ve already paid their dues in spaces exactly like this. It’s the final night of their dual run with MONOCHROME, and that road-worn confidence clings to them, bleeding into every movement, every note, every second they occupy the stage. The shift in atmosphere is immediate and unmistakable. Outside, the night hangs cold and damp, rain clinging to jackets and pavements alike. Inside, it’s something else entirely with heat swelling off the walls, bodies packed tight in thick and heavy with the kind of anticipation that only builds in rooms this small, this intimate, this volatile.

And then it lands. A sudden, unrelenting surge as vocals tearing through the space like shards of glass, jagged and precise, equal parts fury and control. There’s no hesitation, no soft entry point, just impact. The weight of it is undeniable. Watching women command this level of sonic aggression doesn’t just feel powerful, it feels necessary. It’s confrontation and catharsis intertwined, a release of something deeper, something that resonates in that shared, unspoken space within the crowd. A kind of collective exorcism, feminine rage given form, cutting through the noise and pushing back against everything that tries to contain it.

In an instant, the crowd fractures into motion. What stood moments ago as a mass of bodies becomes something far more dangerous, far more alive. Limbs swing without warning, bodies collide with intent, and the floor shifts into hostile territory for anyone not locked into the rhythm of it. A fleeting on-stage crossover with MONOCHROME only heightens the sense of chaos, a brief collision of forces before ÓMOIA plunge straight back into the noise, dragging the room deeper with them, refusing to let the energy drop for even a second.

Rating: 9/10

Switching up the expected order, MONOCHROME step into the headline slot with a quiet sense of inevitability – and from the very first note, it becomes painfully obvious why they tore through Bloodstock Festival‘s Metal 2 The Masses last year with such force. There’s no buildup, no gentle introduction to ease the room in. No breathing space carved out for comfort. Just an immediate, overwhelming sense of impact. The opening track doesn’t begin so much as it detonates.

Sound crashes into the room with unrelenting weight, and the pit responds in kind, erupting into full-blown, unfiltered chaos. This isn’t passive movement or casual shoving; it’s collision, it’s release, it’s bodies meeting the music with equal force. Fists cut through the air, boots leave the ground, hair whips in every direction, and that’s just what’s happening on stage. The line between performer and audience blurs almost instantly, swallowed by the sheer intensity of it all.

What follows is less a set and more a sustained assault, yet one delivered with precision. There’s a discipline beneath the destruction. Breakdowns land with seismic intent, each one engineered for maximum impact, fuelling two-stepping bursts that ripple violently through the crowd. And just when it feels like the room might tip over the edge completely, they pull it back, dialling into slower, more introspective passages that allow a fleeting moment of breath.

Even newer cuts like Levitate hit with absolute authority, slipping seamlessly into a setlist that feels meticulously shaped to push and pull at the room’s limits. There’s an understanding here of how to control not just sound, but atmosphere, how to hold a room in the palm of your hand and squeeze. And in a space like this, there’s nowhere to retreat to. No barrier to lean on, no distance to soften the blow. Every note, every shout, every reverberation hits at point-blank range. It’s overwhelming from MONOCHROME in the best possible way: raw, immediate, and all-consuming. It borders on something religious.

So when a brief, almost offhand comment slips out – “Last night of tour, and we weren’t expecting this many people” – it lands with surprising weight. It cuts through the noise for just a second, grounding the chaos in something real. There’s gratitude there, genuine and unfiltered. A shared understanding that nights like this aren’t guaranteed. Instead, they’re built, moment by moment, by the people who show up and the bands who give everything they have.

And it serves as a reminder, one that feels impossible to ignore in a room like this: smaller shows don’t just rival arenas, they eclipse them. They’re cheaper for a start, but they are closer, heavier… and infinitely more alive.

Rating; 10/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Bristol from Serena Hill Photography here:

Like ÓMOIA on Facebook.

Like MONOCHROME on Facebook.