Lake Malice Academy 3 Manchester Gets A Bloodbath On A Tuesday Night
Manchester Academy 3 - 6th October 2026
WORDS / IMAGES LUKE STOREY
A midweek gig just feels better. Maybe it’s the knowledge that you’ve got work in the morning, maybe it’s the slightly deranged decision to be standing in a sweaty little room on a Tuesday night while the rest of the world is probably watching television, but give me a Tuesday night in a club over a Saturday night arena show any day of the week.
So down to Academy 3 we went for Lake Malice’s headline tour, and from the moment the first support band hit the stage it was obvious that nobody had come here to stand politely at the back and check their phones.
Brighton’s Eville opened proceedings with what they describe, rather brilliantly, as “Brat Metal” — a collision of alternative metal, screaming vocals, synths and the sort of rebellious pop attitude you might expect if Charli XCX suddenly discovered breakdowns. It shouldn’t work. Naturally, it does.
Jude Richards was screaming from the first note, while Eva Sheldrake stalked the stage with the kind of confidence that suggests she has absolutely no interest in asking permission. Their chemistry was obvious, and there was a real sense that this is a band still discovering just how much trouble they can cause with the songs they’ve got.
Then came “No Pictures Please”, an appropriately ironic attack on paparazzi, with Sheldrake staring directly down the photographers in the pit. As a photographer myself, I feel obliged to point out that we are not all vermin. Some of us are merely trying to avoid getting kicked in the head while shooting at f/2.8.
Their new single “Flip Phone” also landed particularly well, already sounding like the sort of track that has found an audience online before the rest of the world has quite caught up. I’d actually seen Eville all over TikTok before tonight, so it was good to finally see whether the internet hype translated into a sweaty room. It did.
By the end they had abandoned the stage altogether, heading into the crowd while a circle pit formed around them. That’s the sort of thing you want from an opening band: no hesitation, no standing around waiting for somebody else to create the atmosphere. They created it themselves.
If Eville brought the chaos, Germany’s Chaos Bay brought the fun.
These guys were all over the place from the opening blast of “Money”, jumping around the stage like somebody had wired the floor directly into the mains. There was something wonderfully uncomplicated about it. They looked like a band genuinely having a fucking great time playing music together, and that enthusiasm was impossible not to catch.
Heavy, melodic and ridiculously energetic, Chaos Bay managed to turn the relatively intimate Academy 3 into something considerably more volatile. There was movement everywhere, bodies flying into pits and the band feeding off every bit of it.
It was also clear that Lake Malice had picked their supports well. Neither band felt like filler. Both could quite comfortably headline the room themselves, and I’d happily pay to see either one do exactly that.
Then came Lake Malice.
Metal, pop, hyper-pop, electronic weirdness, huge hooks and breakdowns that could probably loosen your fillings — Lake Malice apparently decided that genre boundaries were somebody else’s problem.
The British-Italian outfit, based in Brighton, arrived with the considerable weight of their new album I Wanna Know If It’s Real behind them, and from the opening explosion of “Chrome Red” the room was bouncing.
What made the whole thing even more impressive was discovering that Alice was apparently ill and had been close to cancelling the show. You genuinely wouldn’t have known. Her voice was enormous, controlled when it needed to be and absolutely ferocious when the songs demanded it. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, none of it was making it onto that stage.
Guitarist Blake, meanwhile, appeared to be operating under the assumption that the stage was actually a trampoline. He bounced, jumped and threw himself around with his guitar at every available opportunity, giving the whole thing an almost manic physicality. Watching him play was half the show.
The new material sounded particularly potent live. “Scatter Brain” hit hard, while “Rly Ok” carried that strange Lake Malice trick of sounding simultaneously enormous and completely unhinged. Then came “Main Character Energy”, which was perhaps the most appropriately titled moment of the night when Eville joined them on stage.
It felt less like a guest appearance and more like one big gang taking over the room.
And then there was the Faithless and Bebe Rexha cover, “New Religion”.
Now, covers can be dangerous territory. Too often they’re the musical equivalent of putting on fancy dress and hoping nobody notices you haven’t brought anything of your own to the party. Lake Malice did the opposite. They took the song, dragged it through a metal grinder and somehow made it sound like it had been written for them.
It absolutely fucking banged.
That’s really the secret of Lake Malice. Their music shouldn't necessarily make sense on paper. Metal and hyper-pop shouldn't sit this comfortably alongside one another. Heavy breakdowns and glossy pop sensibilities shouldn't naturally occupy the same space. But live, it all clicks.
There’s no sense of the band trying to prove how many genres they can cram into one set. It simply feels natural. One minute you’re being battered by a breakdown, the next you’re hit with something ridiculously catchy, and before your brain has worked out what happened, they’ve changed direction again.
By the time they reached “Bloodbath”, the room was completely theirs.
And there was something satisfying about ending the night with the band’s biggest hammer rather than attempting some grand emotional finale. Just hit the fucking button and blow the place apart.
Which, essentially, is what they did.
Lake Malice came to Manchester with a new record, two excellent support bands and a singer who apparently had every reason not to be standing on that stage in the first place. They left Academy 3 having delivered one of those gigs that reminds you exactly why small rooms still matter.
No arena production. No giant screens. No fireworks.
Just three bands, a sweaty room, loud guitars, screaming vocals, synths, breakdowns and a crowd prepared to lose its mind on a Tuesday night.
Honestly, what more do you need?
SET LIST
Black Turbine
Magic Square
Eternal December
Nobody Wants To Be You
Bloodbath
Mitsuko
(Drum Solo Intro)
Stop the Party
Blossom
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