Last May, something strange happened on the US album charts. Two metal bands (or at least metal-adjacent hard rock groups) had number one albums in the same month. The genre hasn't seen multiple bestsellers in the same year since 2019, and they were by veteran artists. So it was notable when young British group Sleep Token took streaming by storm and Ghost topped the charts with a Taylor Swift-sized vinyl release. Meanwhile, avant-garde heavy rockers Deftones became unexpected TikTok favorites and arena stars.
Metal had not-so-quietly re-emerged as a commercial force, and not just in the live sphere, where it has always thrived and continues to grow. Pop culture seemed ready to welcome back a breed of hitmaker lost to time: the tattooed-sleeve, throat-ripping hard rock star.
So the pop world at large should familiarize itself with the Virginia-born group Bad Omens, whose hit-packed show Thursday night at the Forum in Inglewood reaffirmed that they are one of heavy rock's most ambitious and skilled young bands, and that they have the star power and voracious fan culture to grow even further.
Bad Omens, featuring singer Noah Sebastian, bassist Nicholas Ruffilo, guitarist Joakim Karlsson and drummer Nick Folio, are not new. They have battled it out on the metalcore and heavy rock circuit for a decade, signing to the small but influential label Sumerian Records. But they took a step forward with 2022's “The Death of Peace of Mind,” which fused a Weeknd-worthy R&B falsetto with rotten, churning guitars and tasteful electronics.
The band became festival headliners and racked up billions of streams, surely helped by Sebastian's goth boyfriend good looks and his surprising range as a vocalist, where he goes from a deafening whisper to an operatic howl to a screech worthy of '90s Norway (sometimes in the same song, as he did on “Like a Villain”).
The band has been aiming for a new album for some time now, although for this peak-of-their-career stadium tour, they only had a handful of new singles in tow. It doesn't matter. At the Forum, the band cohesive their catalog with a dazzling stage production, one that presented themselves as an ultra-modern heavy rock act with the scope to become big stars, even if they take genuine fame with some ambivalence.
That force of gravity was evident in the days leading up to the Forum show, where fans debated how many hours in advance they should be at the Forum to be at the barricades (the consensus is to arrive before breakfast). In the middle of the set, Sebastián pointed out a fan whom he recognized from years of touring. “You've been coming to see us since we sucked,” he said, laughing.
That commitment would not be possible if music did not have a supernatural force to speak to current anxieties. From the first notes of their new single “Spectre,” a haunting vocal workout for Sebastian that ended in pulverizing riffs, Bad Omens used avant-garde tools and underground influence to spark an arena-rock catharsis.
One of the first peaks of the set came when Jake Duzsik of L.A. industrial rock trio Health came out to duet on “The Drain,” a wobbly, menacing collaborative single that was a standout for both bands. Heavy rock veterans see something compelling in Bad Omens, which helps situate the band's pop songs like “Left for Good” and “Just Pretend” (a platinum-selling single that concluded the main set) with an earned feeling rather than a calculation.
After the Forum show, I understood why it takes them so long to finish a new LP. Sebastian has been open about his mental health issues. The band finds themselves at a difficult juncture where their artistic ambitions collide with real, life-altering attention.
They can make songs like “What It Cost” (a raunchy, hooky electro track that, if you told me, I'd totally believe was co-written with Max Martin) and the jagged metal with which they earned their fan base and without which they'd cause a riot. It is not easy to pair the two naturally. (Just ask Code Orange, once billed as rising metal stars who got stuck in electronic experiments.) Having a devoted fan base of K-pop caliber is great on the way up, but it's a strained relationship.
But first and foremost, Bad Omens are talented musicians, and whatever otherworldly magic Sebastian works on stage will always be enhanced by a serious band that contorts metal, dark pop, and electronic music. I didn't see anything that would stop a fan from returning for 10 more years of Bad Omens shows, and there are plenty of indications that others will follow.
