The Living Tombstone - Where Gaming Culture Came to Life at Manchester Academy
- Luke Storey
- 4 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Manchester Academy – 21st August 2026
WORDS / IMAGES LUKE STOREY
There are gigs where you know exactly what you're walking into. Then there are gigs where, somewhere between Oxford Road and Manchester Academy, you begin wondering if you've accidentally wandered into Comic-Con.
Friday night was one of those nights.
Manchester was already being assaulted by music from every possible direction. The Cure were over at Wythenshawe Park, DJ Jazzy Jeff was doing his thing at Band on the Wall, Cassyette was tearing up Gorilla, and I was heading towards Manchester Academy to see something rather different: electronic rock, nerdcore and gaming culture collide courtesy of The Living Tombstone.
The first clue that this wasn't going to be your standard Friday-night rock show came outside the Academy. Goths, gamers, anime obsessives, hip-hop heads and cosplay characters were gathering in numbers. Tracers, Freddys and assorted creatures from the deepest recesses of the internet wandered around Oxford Road as though this was the most normal thing in the world.
And perhaps, for this crowd, it was.
The Living Tombstone have built an entire universe from the stuff that consumed the internet generation: video games, anime, memes and the strange digital mythology of growing up online. Five Nights at Freddy's, Overwatch and a whole universe of nerd culture have been turned into songs, and tonight Manchester's gaming community had come out in force to sing every bloody word.
I wasn't entirely sure what I'd signed up for.
I was about to find out.
First up was Shwabadi, a UK-based nerdcore rapper who arrived with considerably more energy than many artists manage with an arena-sized production behind them. His material digs deep into anime, manga and gaming culture, but there was nothing remotely apologetic about it. This wasn't somebody standing on stage hoping you'd understand the references. He owned them.
By the final song he was down in the crowd, high-fiving fans and feeding off an audience that was already beginning to realise this was going to be one hell of a communal evening.
Rustage followed, another nerdcore rapper whose setup was considerably more stripped back: one man, a laptop and a collection of beats. Yet somehow he made the Academy feel much bigger than the equipment suggested. Gaming and anime references flew around the room while his crowd interaction kept the energy firmly up.
I even managed a quick chat with him at the side of the stage. A thoroughly decent bloke, which is always nice to discover when you're standing in a venue surrounded by people dressed as characters from video games.
For his final number, Rustage brought Shwabadi back out, turning the support slot into a little nerdcore summit.
Then the lights dropped.
And suddenly this wasn't just a gig.
The Academy transformed.
Glow sticks appeared everywhere. Plushies were held aloft. The audience became a sea of colour and flashing lights, and then The Living Tombstone walked onto the stage dressed in futuristic robotic suits, each member illuminated in their own neon colour.
It looked like a video game had exploded across the Academy stage.
And, frankly, it looked fantastic.
But the real surprise was the sound.
I had expected electronic tracks dressed up for a live show. What I got was a genuine band performance that gave these songs a physicality I hadn't anticipated. The live instrumentation pushed the electronic material forward, turning what could easily have become a glorified karaoke session into something much bigger, heavier and more alive.
There is something strangely wonderful about watching several thousand people lose their collective minds over songs inspired by video games.
Take "Mercy".
The place erupted.
The audience were singing louder than the performers, particularly when that unmistakable "I wanna be Tracer" moment arrived. If you spent any amount of time on TikTok during lockdown, you've probably heard it. Tonight it became something else entirely: a generational battle cry for people whose cultural touchstones were as likely to come from a computer screen as a record shop.
Then came "Spooky Scary Skeletons", which somehow managed to turn Andrew Gold's novelty classic into an electronic dancefloor monster.
This is where the best description of the night probably becomes karaoke electronic rock dance music.
And I mean that as a compliment.
Because this wasn't simply a collection of people watching a band. It was a community.
That is the thing The Living Tombstone understand better than most. They have gathered together a very particular section of internet culture and given it somewhere physical to exist. These people have spent years consuming this music online, probably alone in bedrooms, headphones clamped to their heads, watching YouTube videos and playing games.
Tonight they were all in the same room.
And they knew everything.
Every lyric. Every reference. Every bloody beat.
The energy was ridiculous.
By the time the encore arrived, the two singers and leading figures behind The Living Tombstone stopped for a moment and spoke directly to the crowd about what this music means to them. There was something genuinely touching about hearing online creators talk about finally seeing the people behind the screen names, likes and numbers.
Then came the inevitable rant about AI.
"Fuck AI."
The room roared.
I couldn't help agreeing.
There's something reassuring about thousands of people screaming for actual human-made music in a world increasingly stuffed with algorithmically generated slop. The Living Tombstone have spent years creating their own strange corner of the internet, and tonight they were defending the very human connection that made it possible in the first place.
Then they pressed the detonator.
"Discord."
Pandemonium.
Next came "It's Been So Long", their Five Nights at Freddy's 2 anthem, and the Academy practically shook itself apart. Every word was shouted back from the crowd, front to back, with the kind of religious devotion usually reserved for football terraces or Oasis concerts.
Then "My Ordinary Life", with its instantly recognisable melody sampled from the Japanese anime Nichijou: My Ordinary Life.
And, bloody hell, it's catchy.
I'd walked into Manchester Academy wondering how much mileage there could possibly be in songs inspired by games and anime.
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
The final assault came from their original Five Nights at Freddy's material, and by now the audience had nothing left to give except everything they had. One final eruption, one final scream and one final reminder that somewhere along the line, gaming music had become a fully fledged musical culture of its own.
Walking back out into Manchester afterwards, I had to admit something I hadn't expected to say when I arrived.
I had a bloody good time.
This wasn't my usual gig. There were no leather jackets, no ageing rock stars pretending they're still 27, no sweaty guitar heroics in the traditional sense. Instead there were glow sticks, cosplay, anime references, plushies, electronic beats, rappers and enough Five Nights at Freddy's nostalgia to make me briefly feel twelve years old again, sitting in front of a computer waiting for an animatronic bear to jump out and scare the living shit out of me.
But underneath all the gaming references and internet madness, there was something very familiar.
Music bringing people together.
That's what a great gig is supposed to do.
The Living Tombstone just happen to have found a generation that grew up somewhere between the bedroom, the internet and the gaming console — and they've given them a soundtrack.
Manchester Academy was their playground on Friday night.
And this old music hack left it wondering how the hell gaming songs got this musically complex without me noticing.
Maybe I've been playing the wrong games.
SET LIST
Kill Us All
I Got No Time
(Cats Meow Outro)
Fight Til I'm Good Enough
(Zero-one introduced it as I Wanna Be A Machine by mistake)
I Wanna Be A Machine
September
Basics In Behavior
(Zero-one started "lagging" near the end of the song)
I Can't Fix You
Somebody
No Mercy
(Ended with a medical emergency, band stopped for a few minutes before continuing)
It Doesn't Matter
Epoch
(Savlonic cover)
Squid Melody
(Rust sat on stage drawing Kermit the Frog on an iPad)
Under The Sun
(unreleased)
Spooky Scary Skeletons
(Andrew Gold cover)
This Comes From Inside
Die in a Fire
ENCORE
Discord
(Eurobeat Brony cover) (anti-AI speech and "Fuck AI!" chant)
It's Been So Long
(Cats Meow Outro; Zero-one sang "Thomas the Tank Engine Theme" before starting My Ordinary Life)
My Ordinary Life
(ended with band and crew introductions, Armstrong played a snippet of Metallica's "Enter Sandman")
Five Nights at Freddy's
FOLLOW THE LIVING TOMBSTONE
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