40 Live Acts You Should Go And See In 2026 (part two)
Gnome
Gnome are a three-piece from Belgium playing what might be the funkiest sludge metal you’ll ever hear. Before they even hit the stage, there’s usually a queue stretching throughout the venue for their signature gnome hats, as the room becomes a sea of pointy heads bobbing in unison. Using classic dragon/wizard/quest themes as a jumping off point for long, meandering grooves, this is a power trio with no excessively detuned nonsense or double-pedal overkill, just deeply funky doom.
Heavy Lungs
A four-piece punk band from Bristol with an unreasonable level of volume. If you’ve never seen Danny Nedelko perform, you owe it to yourself to witness how much energy one person can generate on stage, doing press-ups between songs and crowd surfing before the band have finished their second track. The band match that intensity with a tremendous arsenal of effects pedals churning out huge crunch and fuzz, testing how loud, brash and physical a punk gig can be with buckets of charisma.
Snapped Ankles
Snapped Ankles are an institution across the festival circuit. Few bands are as reliably good at turning any room into a party. Armed with an array of homemade synthesisers strapped to logs and performing in ghillie suits under low light blasted by huge green strobes, their mission is simply to make the crowd move and release their stress and tension. Their music nods to the early rave movement, the communal highs of Woodstock-era counterculture, and even further back to the ritualistic dancing that runs through all indigenous cultures, taking the logic of repetition as trance and applying it to modern electronica.
HONESTY
HONESTY are one of the most intriguing discoveries we’ve made this year, and they absolutely deserve your attention, because there’s nothing else quite like what they’re doing live right now. Performing between two translucent mesh screens with rapid-fire projections with fragments of lyrics, the visual dream noise is disorientating and immersive. Roles constantly shift behind the curtain with no singular front person, with music that’s a deep, emotional take on UK club culture drawing on house, garage, techno and ambient. Blurring the line between a gig, an art installation and a dream, HONESTY are an essential watch for anyone interested in where electronic music could go next.
Slung
Slung are a four-piece from Brighton whose debut album arrived with impressive confidence, hitting a sweet spot that’s equally satisfying if you like your riffs big, heavy and stomping, but also packed with songs that are catchy and tender. Katie Oldham is a tremendous vocalist who can shift effortlessly from hushed whispers to soaring power, and all four members bring their own charisma with great chemistry. Slung are a properly great rock band that more people need to know about.
Teen Mortgage
Teen Mortgage have been making waves way beyond their native punk scene with simple, hooky, dirty, and incredible effective punk songs delivered with conviction. After releasing a tremendous debut album, they had a huge year touring with Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer before destroying the European festival circuit. Their songs are sharp and satisfying with no filler and no excess, they’re relentless live, and they’re absolutely worth your time.
Whitechapel
A serious contender for the heaviest and most terrifying metal show on the planet. Whitechapel’s most recent album Hymns in Dissonance is an exercise in extreme excess, gory and disgusting. This is metal at its most brutally over the top with relentless chugging, inhuman vocals and thunderous drum work that ranks among the very best in the genre. What sets Whitechapel apart is how professional they are at delivering the punishment, with a precise and clinical brutality. They terrify the audience with sound alone, and they do it with ruthless expertise. Extremity at the highest possible level, it’s hard to imagine a heavier and scarier metal show.
The Pill
The Pill are a breath of fresh air in the British punk landscape, not by trying to be louder or more righteous than everyone else, but by being so silly. Fast, fun punk that’s ditzy and girly, where the jokes come first. Lily and Lottie are here to make you laugh rather than wrap everything in heavy-handed politics, and their shows are playful and lovable. You’re guaranteed a great night in The Pill’s very capable hands.
Soot Sprite
Soot Sprite’s debut album Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon arrived this year and immediately felt special. If you’re politically engaged, struggling with the cost of living, or simply feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world these songs tackle that sense of pressure from every angle, giving voice to feelings a lot of us are carrying quietly moving between tender, intimate passages and huge, cathartic choruses buried under crashing walls of distortion. With strong, sincere songwriting at the core, and a band who know exactly when to let rip, Soot Sprite don’t just make you feel impressed with their playing, they make you feel understood.
Kneecap
If you’ve only encountered Kneecap through the media frenzy, you’d be forgiven for assuming that their gigs are little more than a political lecture. Whilst yes, they draw attention to what’s happening in Palestine, and we stand unequivocally with them, a Kneecap show is primarily a celebration of hedonism and classic rave culture that feels dangerous, with all the polish and sanitised gloss stripped away to reveal something lawless and punk. Kneecap have made the Irish language feel cool again, which is no small achievement, and seeing them live feels like being present at an essential cultural moment.
