LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: Better Lovers – Arts Club, Liverpool – 22/10/2025

As per the request of Better Lovers themselves, there’s no barrier for tonight’s show. It’s also been put in the loft of the Arts Club, and with loads of hardcore punk piped over the PA as a warm-up, things start clicking together. If Better Lovers’ UK run earlier this year was a more ‘standard’ affair, this looks to be channelling the spirit of classic hardcore that, in their previous bands, these guys had all outgrown. You’d never mistake The Dillinger Escape Plan or Every Time I Die for grandiose bastions of the mainstream, but by the end of their respective runs, they weren’t acts that could just rock up in tiny clubs by nature anymore, either. Better Lovers, on the other hand, still have the crackle of new fire about them, and the harsh, angular hardcore sound that’s its natural bedfellow.

By comparison, Greyhaven come far better equipped for the climes of a more traditional venue. They’ve got the most outright post-hardcore melodiousness on this bill, to where if they weren’t also Better Lovers’ opener at the start of the year, their inclusion on their face might be getting some looks. Frontman Brent Mills, for example, bears a posture, occasional flamboyant mannerisms and an emo barnet that might have certain implications, but they’re blown past before a sweat has even been broken. Energised by their really-good recent album Keep It Quiet, Greyhaven show themselves off as an impressively tight-knit unit, capable of fitting the heavier mood. More unkempt cuts like Sweet Machine jut out, but general harshness from drummer Ethan Spray and bassist Johnny Muench (fully letting his hardcore flag fly) set a strong precedent overall. It’s just very impressive as a whole, a sign of coming a long way on every possible front.

As for ‘68, they seem here based more on their commonality with the headliners—Josh Scogin was also a mathcore leading man who took his talents elsewhere when his main band dissolved. His achievements in distilling The Chariot’s chaos into noisier, hairier garage-rock are noteworthy, no matter how hard a sell Scogin seems to want to make this. He and drummer Nikko Yamada are already the odd band out visually, in their suits and bowties with a setup that has them facing each other in performance (Scogin’s mic is effectively hanging over the kit). That’s the framework for ‘68’s interesting collection of noises they make, as opposed to ‘songs’. The closest to a cogent melody is a cover of the Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic; otherwise, it’s all grinding and howling and impregnable layers of fuzz, and even a theremin broken out at one point. When Scogin thanks the crowd for “[supporting] human music”, it’s apropos when an AI bot would never spew out this many loose ends and errant passageways. But as he also says, mid-song and seemingly forgetting which part he’s up to, “it’s all part of the show.” This is heavy music that makes itself known through burst eardrums and a cracked sternum—not always pleasant or satisfying, but certainly noteworthy.

Finally, Better Lovers are up, and they get their own ‘not pleasant or satisfying, but noteworthy’ moment out of the way before they’ve even set foot on stage. Initially, the idea of a megamix of songs with ‘love’ in the title as walk-on music is a good one; people seem jazzed as they sing along to Easy Lover and All You Need Is Love…until the whole thing goes on for way too long, and the nosediving interest is easy to catch onto. It’s, thankfully, the sole moment of flagging that their time produces, as A White Horse Covered In Blood introduces the standard for a Better Lovers production right quick. This is hardcore powered by rocket fuel and piloted by players who, quite obviously, have cumulative decades of experience. It simply couldn’t be anything else, and the lack of a barrier that has Greg Puciato jonesing to leave the stage altogether (even though he never does, curiously) revs it up even further. The first stage-dive of the night on song one is just the cherry on top.

Now, it’s possible to nitpick and say that the mixing on Puciato’s vocals isn’t the greatest, and that the razor-tipped edges are given more prominence than the voice itself. But you also have to accept that, especially amongst a scene like this, that doesn’t matter. Puciato looks as though he’s in his element regardless, when the likes of Superman Died Paralyzed are such faithful callbacks to Dillinger-esque insanity, and every high-end scream lands an insurmountable thrill. That’s not to leave the rest of them out, by any means. Three-fifths of Better Lovers came up through Every Time I Die, don’t forget, and still display every bit of gusto that venerates a band as heavily as they were. The second-to-none live profile augments a brand of melody lifted directly from the ETID playbook—searing presence like on Sacrificial Participant, and with the first and only slowdown At All Times, a trench-like depth that courses and carves its way through.

For about an hour, the whole thing feels like a showcase of hardcore at its most toned and built. Here’s a group of veterans in the field doing what they do best, and in environment that heightens that even further. Both ETID and Dillinger had outgrown rooms of this size by orders of magnitude each, but Better Lovers grab the opportunity and make every square inch their own. Even if this isn’t a ‘special’ show in so many words, the fact there’s so little time wasted or energy left untapped gives it that feel. Mid-set, the band pause to ask for the oldest and youngest person in the room, and the fact the results span from ages 20 to 81 (even if the validity of the latter is a bit shaky) means something is clearly going right. It’s a simple formula, really—take several established, acclaimed hardcore bases; remove any pretensions or notions of ennui; let the classic thrills of hardcore take the reins; and you get Better Lovers. Long may that continue.

Words by Luke Nuttall

Photos by Maryleen (Instagram / Website)