The Damned – 50th Anniversary Celebration – OVO Arena Wembley
- Alan Bryce
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
OVO Arena, Wembley, London – 11th April 2026
IMAGES / WORDS ALAN BRYCE
Walking into the OVO Arena for The Damned’s 50th anniversary felt wrong in the best possible way. Punk bands aren’t meant to live this long, and they’re definitely not meant to fill aircraft hangars without turning into heritage exhibits behind glass. Yet here we were, thousands of survivors of bad decisions and better records, filing into a corporate coliseum to celebrate a band that once sounded like they wanted to burn the whole thing down.
Before The Damned even set foot on stage, the night had already taken on a strange, sprawling momentum thanks to three support acts who could not have been more different if you’d tried to plot them on a pinball machine.
First up were The Courettes, two people generating the kind of noise normally associated with garage doors being kicked through. They came out swinging, all crackle and sweat and 60s soaked garage punk, like a reminder that volume and conviction still count for something. No reverence, no bowing to the altar of punk history — just sharp riffs, snarled vocals and a refusal to read the room. If they were nervous about opening for a punk institution, they hid it behind distortion and speed. It worked.
Then the room shifted. Peter Hook & The Light took over like the ghost of post punk future suddenly drifting in from Manchester. Hook’s basslines — those endlessly walking, emotionally loaded things — cut clean through the arena. It was less aggression, more gravity. Less punch in the face, more nerves exposed. He talked briefly about discovering punk, about hearing New Rose, and for a moment the lineage snapped into focus: this wasn’t nostalgia, it was continuity. The Damned didn’t just start something — they left doors open.
SET LIST
Dead Souls (Joy Division cover)
Digital (Joy Division cover)
Isolation (Joy Division cover)
Disorder (Joy Division cover)
She’s Lost Control (Joy Division cover)
Shadowplay (Joy Division cover)
Transmission (Joy Division cover)
Ceremony (New Order cover)
Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division cover)
By the time Marc Almond arrived with The Loveless, the evening fully embraced its shapeshifting identity. Glam, torch song drama, gothic shimmer — Almond commanded the stage like a man who understands camp as a survival tactic. His voice still soared, still trembled, still knew exactly when to lean into excess. It shouldn’t have worked. Somehow, completely, it did. Punk has always had room for theatre, whether it admits it or not.
SET LIST
Wild in the streets – Garland Jeffreys cover
Putty in your hands – The Yardbirds cover
You’re Gonna Miss Me – The Spades cover
Hot Hard and Ready – Smokey cover
Teenage Wild
Dark Side
Nothing at All
Under my wheels – Alice Cooper cover
Love Missile F1-11 – Sigue Sigue Sputnik cover
Hell Raiser – Sweet cover
Tainted Love – Gloria Jones cover
Heat – Soft Cell cover
And then the lights dropped.
The screen rolled with a cheap horror intro — B movie fonts, melodrama, a wink and a bite — and suddenly The Damned were there. Not resurrected. Not embalmed. Alive. Dave Vanian emerged looking like he might at any point drive off in a hearse filled with champagne. Captain Sensible — still wearing enough colour to insult minimalism itself — grinned like a man who knows the joke and refuses to explain it. Rat Scabies hit the drums like time was personally offensive. Paul Gray locked the whole thing down. Monty Oxymoron hovered somewhere between carnival organist and mad scientist.
From the opening moments, it was obvious this was not going to be a polite victory lap. Songs crashed into each other across decades — punk burnouts, gothic melodrama, psychedelic turns, pop sharpness — all delivered with the reckless confidence of a band that knows exactly who they are and absolutely does not care who they’re supposed to be at 50.
Vanian’s voice hasn’t softened; it’s deepened, become more sinister, more controlled. Sensible’s guitar still sliced and swerved, half tight, half unhinged. And Scabies — Christ — hit like a man trying to make sure no one mistook this for an anniversary dinner.
What struck me most wasn’t the hits (though they landed like thrown furniture), but the refusal to tidy the story. This wasn’t a greatest hits museum tour; it was a reminder that The Damned survived because they never agreed on what they were supposed to be. Punk? Goth? Psych? Comedy? Horror show? Yes. All of it. At once.
By the end, the arena felt less like a venue and more like a temporary autonomous zone full of people who had once been told they’d outgrow this. Instead, they grew into it — wrinkles, bad knees, eyeliner intact.
The Damned didn’t just celebrate fifty years. They dared the room to argue with it. And nobody did.
Still not dead. Still dangerous enough.
SETLIST
Set 1:
Street of Dreams
Wait for the Blackout
The History of The World (Part 1)
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Stranger on the Town
Under the Floor Again
Eloise (Barry Ryan cover)
Wake The Dead
I just can’t be happy today
Life Goes ON
Is It a Dream
Smash It Up (Part 1)
Smash It Up (Part 2)
Set 2:
Nasty
Love Song
Machine Gun Etiquette
Fan Ckub
Disco Man
Ignite
Neat Neat Neat
Curtain Call
Drum Solo (Rat Scabies)
New Rose
Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye (Gracie Fields cover)(Acappella)
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