LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: Pierce The Veil – Co-Op Live, Manchester – 25/09/2025

Between the beginning of this world tour and now, Pierce The Veil might have become bigger than ever. That’s not a common instance by any stretch, but when seemingly anything can get picked up for a viral moment, it’s possible. Their North American leg ended with them as 2010s post-hardcore’s sworn-in forerunners; the UK and European one begins with So Far So Fake as something of a hit for them, on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s still not entirely clear why this random deep cut from The Jaws Of Life caught fire like this, but hey—take what you can get, right?

Maybe, in the arbitrary standings of ‘making it’, it gives them credence for taking over the biggest indoor venue in the country that they otherwise might not have had. Just last year, their Manchester stop took them to the O2 Victoria Warehouse, an exponentially smaller room that already felt like a grand swing among an ostensible arena tour. Of course, give it just a second of thought and you realise that a single fly-by-night hit might have goosed up some last-minute sales, but they’re not banking on that entirely. Clearly, Pierce The Veil have plans.

And for some reason, said plans involve proceedings beginning ludicrously early. Doors at 5:30 on a workday is a bit of a piss-take, ultimately meaning we miss Crawlers’ graveyard shift that, if reports are to be believed, a lot of others did, too. They’re an odd choice to stick at the beginning as it is, between sound, trajectory and commerciality that would make arenas a natural fit for them. Certainly more than Hot Mulligan, though you can’t argue with the results of Nathan Sanville’s ragged yells filling their allotted space. Screams could probably power through even the muddiest of arena standards, but it’s nice to see that the cleaner, more melodic framework of Hot Mulligan can do the same. They are, first and foremost, an emo band resting on their cavalcade of hooks, to where Island In The Sun and *equip sunglasses* are quick to take flight, and the more subdued BCKYRD is as close to an epic closer as they’ve got. Even outside of a couple of really zealous fans behind us screaming their way to a torn lung, there’s a lot of love for Hot Mulligan and how well everything about them seems to work.

Granted, the argument against going with the masses’ judgement comes directly after. Apparently, they like Cavetown even more, despite having monumentally less to get enthused by. Expanding the musical repertoire from softboi bedroom-pop to a bigger breed of emo-pop is something, but the edgeless, meandering trundle of it all does no favours whatsoever. Don’t let the spiky, metallicised Y2K logo in the back fool you; this sounds like literally nothing you could infer from that. It’s all shaped by this cloying, ‘smol bean’ demeanour that, if you’re outside the target demographic, is nearly impossible to keep down. A kicked-up pace towards the end can only rescue so much. For the most part, you can hope for pleasant little flutters and ambles from a competent act as the best case scenario, unashamed of being the most milquetoast thing in existence. It’s worth noting that when Pierce The Veil’s Vic Fuentes arrives to join in with a kind thing to do—a song whose harder opening guitar chug would suggest much more than what actually transpires—you can practically feel any and all energy in the room snap towards him. After that, it’s back to the regularly scheduled Cavetown mediocrity.

Thankfully, ‘mediocrity’ is not to last; it’s a country mile away from anywhere that Pierce The Veil decide to set foot these days. Considering they come from a generation of rock music often boiled down to the barest essentials of squeaky frontmen and ridiculous fringes—of which Fuentes was effectively the poster-boy for both—that might seem strange from an outside perspective, but just go with it. After all, few of their compatriots can tackle a room this size. Even fewer (as in, probably just Pierce The Veil) could inflate a cushion of anticipation this thick via the mariachi stylings of Vicente Fernández’s El Rey. There’s a one-of-a-kind feel to Pierce The Veil these days, of a band emerging past the age of ‘traditional’ arena-rockers, yet ending up here all the same. And it’s more than just keeping up appearances that they’re here for; from front to back, they’re the real deal.

Death Of An Executioner slams into life to establish where Pierce The Veil are here—heavy; forceful; beholden to an utterly devastating rhythm section where, despite Loniel Robinson being still only a ‘touring member’ status, the drums have more of a carnivorous roar than ever. That, especially, reflects in the surging dynamism of Bulls In The Bronx, or how the opening bongos of I Low On Gas And You Need A Jacket represent an angle so small that it’s almost throwaway, but is honed down to a science. Perhaps it’s also the encouragement for the core band to leap to similar heights. The granite-shearing riff of Pass The Nirvana and the punch-and-shudder pace of I’d Rather Die Than Be Famous are the work of musicians lightyears from the hemmed, style-over-substance preconceptions of the scene they spawned from. It’s all ridiculously impressive, and the sickly yellow light the stage is bathed in cranks up a caustic feel by a few notches.

There’s excitement among the air of doom, though. You can tell that guitarist Tony Perry and bassist Jaime Preciado are thrilled to have a big stage to play around on, the latter in particular with a boyish energy coming through in lots of jovial jumps, twists and bass-flings. (It’s kind of dwarfed by Perry swinging his guitar over his head by the cord, though that’s more a grand finale as far as onstage antics are concerned.) Vic Fuentes, meanwhile, isn’t as immediate in sharing his band’s jubilation. He honestly seems a little frightened at first, as if slammed by the realisation that he’s at the bow of the UK’s biggest venue and the nerves are starting to show. He does limber up at his own pace, mind; by Floral & Fading and its preceding mini-cover of the Pixies’ Where Is My Mind?—the second consecutive alt-rock classic given a live run-through after last time’s Karma Police—he’s in his element.

And it’s not like, at any point, he’s the trapped gear in Pierce The Veil’s well-oiled machine, either. On the contrary; Fuentes has the instantly recognisable voice to really get these songs to launch when they’re off the ground. But that’s the key thing to note about Pierce The Veil—unlike how incalculably many of their peers were tarred as ‘a frontman and the less-important backing players’, that couldn’t be further from the truth here. You get that in their music even on record, in the complexities alien to much of the emo and post-hardcore of their time. Here, though, it doesn’t even have to come to that when Fuentes, Perry and Preciado are perched on boyband stools for Wonderless, all on the same footing as equally-weighted peers. Sure, there’s a wee bit of an audio / visual disconnect when there’s a big, grungy riff at the core of this, but building into another great, gruff alt-rock number can solve a lot.

What plays out after that is Pierce The Veil pulling out every big gun in their arsenal. Screams erupt when the Collide From The Sky logo is emblazoned in hard red on the stage’s screen, and a symphonic swell preludes Hell Above’s morphing into a pulverising metalcore behemoth. After that, So Far So Fake emerges with a slither befitting of much more depth than your average TikTok hit. A little later, Circles lives up to its potential as the band’s arena-ready pop-rock anthem in this grandest of settings. They’re all huge moments, stacked high and firm, and foaming with the energy that this current incarnation of Pierce The Veil is prizing. The highest heights are to follow, though, with the tearjerker Hold On Till May and one last incendiary round in the shape of King For A Day to finish things off. It’s ingratiated itself among the modern post-hardcore canon for a reason, or multiple reasons, more likely, with how many unmistakable moments it packs into itself.

Maybe it’s a bit pat to say, but that’s almost like a microcosm of Pierce The Veil as a whole. In 2025, at a point where plenty would presume degradation or winding-down to be taking hold, they legitimately feel bigger than ever. A viral hit is one thing, but a headline set in an enormo-arena, half the world away from home, delivering material from every juncture of their career with a fresh, heavy refurb? Yeah, that doesn’t seem like some flash-in-the-pan spike. Maybe Pierce The Veil really are just getting bigger and better, and everyone—even way outside of their core audience—is beginning to take notice. The fact that anything goes from now on could be the most exciting thing to ever happen to them.

Words by Luke Nuttall

Photos by Faye Roberts (Instagram)