About event
POST HUMAN: NeX GEn lands in Quebec for BMTH’s biggest local headline yet. Here is what stayed in the ear.
The lights drop, a synth pulse builds, and the floor of the Centre Bell does that thing where a sold-out arena suddenly remembers it owns the room. By the time the first riff hits, you already know Bring Me the Horizon are not doing a normal Wednesday show.
This was the band’s first Montreal headline at Centre Bell, a meaningful upgrade from their 2019 Place Bell stop. BMTH have circled Quebec for over a decade, from Café l’Inco to Club Soda to Metropolis to Stade Uniprix. Tonight they finally got the room their catalog has been demanding, and they walked into it like they had the deed in their pocket.
The Openers
By the time the BMTH intro tape rolled, the building had already burned through most of its patience for restraint. The undercard did its job, and then some.
Amira Elfeky opened the night and probably picked up a few hundred new listeners on the spot. The LA artist sits in a Gen-Z corner of nu-metal and goth-rock that the heavier scene has been waiting for. Her 2025 EP Surrender is the right entry point, and the Architects co-sign on The Sky, the Earth & All Between track “Judgement Day” earlier in the year already told you where this trajectory is going. Twenty minutes was not enough. TNR file: keep watching.
The Plot In You played second and were the surprise heavyweights of the night. The Ohio post-hardcore band have spent the last few years quietly reshaping their rollout, dropping three-track Volumes instead of full LPs, and the catalog has piled up over 260M Spotify streams while nobody was watching. Their self-titled compilation lands July 10, 2026. Live, Landon Tewers’ dynamic range was the thing: he can take a chorus from whisper to shred without ever sounding like he is performing the move. Easily the set that left the building feeling pre-warmed.
Motionless In White took direct support and walked the line with the confidence of a band that has co-headlined arenas in their own right. The Pennsylvania crew leaned into the gothic-industrial theatrics they have always done well, and their newer material translates cleanly to a 21k-cap room. By the time they closed out, the floor was already in arena mode.
The BMTH Set
The headlining set leaned hard on the POST HUMAN: NeX GEn material. AmEN! detonated early. Kool-Aid landed like the band’s most confident new anthem in years. YOUtopia and LosT showed how cleanly Oli Sykes can pivot between hyper-pop ear candy and screamcore in the same bar without it sounding like cosplay.
The legacy cuts hit harder than expected. Shadow Moses still owns this band even a decade on. Antivist dropped like a grenade in the middle of the set, the kind of song that reminds you BMTH used to play 200-cap rooms with that same body weight in their riffs. Throne closed the night, as it should, the entire arena chanting back at Oli with the conviction it has held since 2015.
The show’s pivot point came mid-set with Can You Feel My Heart. The phone-light ocean is a cliché at this point, but the way Sykes let the second chorus drop into a near-silent crowd carry, cutting his vocal entirely for a couple of bars, was a control move that newer arena bands still cannot pull off.
Performance-wise: Oli’s voice held the full range, gritty in the screams, surprisingly tender on Drown and Doomed. Lee Malia’s guitar tone was the most aggressive it has sounded on this tour, almost djent-adjacent in spots. Mat Nicholls played like he had something to prove, especially on Happy Song, hitting the kick patterns like he was trying to put a hole in the floor.
From where I was standing: the setlist had three of my favorites stacked into one night, Can You Feel My Heart, Follow You, and the one I always come back to, Drown. That is the emotional payline of a BMTH show for me, and they hit all three. What I did not see coming was the production. BMTH did not just play a show, they dropped you inside a video-game world for ninety minutes. The visual build, the lighting cues, the way the screens treated each era of the band as its own environment, all of it pushed the night past “concert” and into something closer to a level you walk through. That part was unannounced and it was the difference.
What POST HUMAN era BMTH does best, and what last night confirmed, is the seamlessness of the catalog cross-fade. The hyper-modern stuff sits next to the 2013 metalcore without either feeling out of place. That is rare. Most bands either stay in their lane or sound nostalgic about leaving it. BMTH neither apologize for Sempiternal nor protect themselves from NeX GEn. They play it all like it is one record made over twelve years.
The hyper-modern material sits next to the 2013 metalcore without either feeling out of place. That is rare.
Bring Me the Horizon return to Quebec on September 30 at the Centre Vidéotron, on the third leg of the POST HUMAN: NeX GEn run. If last night is what an Ascension Program 2 stop sounds like at peak, the Quebec City room will need its own warning label.
Hear different.
Setlist
Preliminary setlist as circulated by setlist.fm and 99scenes ahead of the show. Final order on the night may vary slightly. We will update once the confirmed setlist is posted.
- DArkSide
- The House of Wolves
- MANTRA
- Happy Song
- Teardrops
- AmEN!
- Kool-Aid
- Shadow Moses
- YOUtopia
- Kingslayer
- Antivist
- Follow You
- LosT
- Can You Feel My Heart
- Doomed
- Drown
- Throne
Venue: Centre Bell, Montreal, QC
Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2026 (doors 5 PM / show 6 PM)
Tour: North American Ascension Program 2
Support: Motionless In White, The Plot In You, Amira Elfeky
The Next Radio – Hear music differently.
