O2 Arena, London
Wednesday, 26th November 2025
Sometimes you go to a concert with quietly hopeful expectations, prepared for an enjoyable evening’s entertainment and the chance to hear a few of your favourite tunes. Then there are those rare evenings when, within seconds of the band arriving on stage, the realisation dawns you’ve completely underestimated what it is you’re about to experience. About 30 seconds after the curtain dropped and Halestorm hit the O2 Arena stage, my moment of realisation arrived: no cutesy preamble, no gentle easing in, just pure, disciplined, glorious, visceral intensity from the first note.
Fallen Star literally lights up the arena with a fabulous pyrotechnic display, the lights and the music sweeping the audience away with an infectious momentum so raw and so powerful, resistance felt futile. This wasn’t a polite invitation to “experience” a show; from the outset, Halestorm presented us with a seductive challenge and demanded total immersion in the musical maelstrom unfolding before us. If you were willing to surrender to it – and I most certainly did – the thrill of the ride was exhilarating.
I’ve seen Halestorm before, years ago, in a much smaller venue and found them impressive. The O2 Arena is a different proposition entirely. It is a vast space that can swallow bands whole, demanding not just talent but presence, not just volume but authority. Lzzy called it their ‘rite of passage’. The opening chords left us in no doubt they were up for the challenge. They looked utterly at home, filling the enormous space with a sound and an energy which wrapped itself around everyone, making the size of the arena irrelevant.
What followed felt less like a conventional concert and more like a masterclass in sustained, effortless artistic intensity. Just when you thought you’d reached one climactic musical peak, they blazed on toward the next, then the next, then the next. It was like riding a galloping horse, not knowing the destination but joyfully overwhelmed by the speed and exhilaration of the journey itself. From Fallen Star through I Miss the Misery and Love Bites (So Do I), the intensity never wavered; this wasn’t simply a chronological setlist, but a carefully shaped arc in which each song built on the atmosphere of the last, somehow feeling both meticulously curated and wildly spontaneous.
Halestorm’s nEVEREST tour makes the metaphor of the climb feel ruggedly tangible in the arena, with the new material woven through the set as its emotional backbone. New songs such as WATCH OUT!, Everest, Rain Your Blood on Me, and the devastating I Gave You Everything don’t arrive as polite “here’s one from the new album” interludes, but as an exemplary testimony to Lzzy’s acutely perceptive storytelling skills. The songs speak clearly of resilience, vulnerability, and hard-won emotional scars, which sit naturally alongside I Miss the Misery and Love Bites (So Do I) as an organic extension of their musical journey to date.
Indeed, this is where Halestorm’s artistry revealed itself most clearly. Plenty of bands can play loud and fast. What set this show apart was the thread of discipline running through the apparent chaos, the tightness and precision within each surge of power. The band never lost control of the dynamics, even at their most ferocious. This taut, rigorous control made the heavier and more intense songs – Freak Like Me and K-I-L-L-I-N-G, for example – land all the harder and with such profound impact.
The interplay between instruments was exquisite: technically razor-sharp, yes, but also musically intuitive. The band reveal a perceptive understanding of dynamics: true musical intensity, creating resonance through being “heavy”, requires thoughtfulness and restraint. It is all too easy to dismiss metal and hard rock as mindless chuggy-chuggy chords played at volume, compensating for a lack of subtlety. Halestorm quickly and effortlessly dispel the crassness of such assumptions. Their talent is unmistakable, and the quality and impact of their songwriting and performance are impossible to deny.
At the centre of this beautifully controlled storm stands Lzzy Hale. To call her performance merely ‘powerful’ is to barely scratch the surface. She owns and dominates the stage, certainly, but there is nothing cold or distant in her presence. She is at once imposing and relatable, teasing and sincere, powerful yet disarmingly humble in her connection with the crowd. Her facial expressions feel like extensions of the music itself. What we witness is a total performance: formidable vocal power, tireless physical energy, and a complete embodiment of the character she creates for us in real time.
It is a character which fills the O2’s massive space with an ease which is comfortable with that scale. There was no sense of overcompensation, no strain to “fill” the arena; instead, she seemed to extend her energy outward, drawing the audience in rather than projecting at them. She belonged there, and the audience knew it. During Uncomfortable, she was vulnerable and raw; by Freak Like Me, she became playful and provocative; through I Gave You Everything, she stood emotionally exposed. These weren’t poses but genuine shifts of tone and emotion, each song serving the wider narrative arc she was building across the evening.
The O2 is a landmark venue, but Halestorm didn’t just rise to the occasion; they behaved as though this was the most natural step in the world. There was no hint of a band trying to prove they belonged; instead, they played like a group who had always known they would reach this stage eventually. The confidence earned from years of relentless touring and refinement seeped into every moment, and it was a delight to witness.
What made the show transcendent wasn’t any single element: not the musicianship alone, nor Lzzy’s presence alone, nor even the sleek, powerful production. It was the totality of the experience they created, the way energy flowed between band and audience until the room felt like a single living entity moving together. By the closing strains of I Gave You Everything, the surprise was not that they had come and conquered; the surprise was ever doubting they could.
This is what live music, at its best, achieves: not mere entertainment, but transformation. For a couple of glorious hours, carried by an unrelenting forward motion, we weren’t watching a performance: we were part of something larger, more visceral, more immediate and present than recorded music can ever fully capture. Halestorm understand this instinctively, and on this night at the O2 they reminded us live performance remains the true pinnacle to which bands should aspire. Indeed, it is a summit they now occupy with complete authority.
[Photographs courtesy of Jamie Robertson]
SETLIST
Black Sabbath (intro cover)
Fallen Star
I Miss the Misery
Love Bites (So Do I)
WATCH OUT!
I Get Off
Shiver
Like a Woman Can
How Will You Remember Me?
Familiar Taste of Poison
Rain Your Blood on Me
Freak Like Me
Mz. Hyde
Uncomfortable
K-I-L-L-I-N-G
Everest
I Gave You Everything
~ Encore:
I Am The Fire
Perry Mason
Here’s to Us
MUSICIANS
Lzzy Hale – Guitar, Vocals
Arejay Hale – Drums, Backing Vocals
Joe Hottinger – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Josh Smith – Bass, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
LINKS
Halestorm – Website | Facebook | YouTube | X | Instagram
