Amy Lee and co. bring some serious firepower to a sold-out O2, with Poppy, K.Flay and Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante all piling in for a night celebrating the queens of metal…
Words by Felix Bartlett | Sep 14, 2026
Plenty of bands two decades and six albums deep would happily coast through an arena tour on the hits alone. Evanescence, clearly, aren’t plenty of bands. Tonight they gamble on stacking a sold-out O2 setlist with fresh cuts from this year’s ‘Sanctuary’, trusting that London will love the new stuff as much as the classics that made them. Spoiler: it’s a bet that pays off. First, though, two support acts well worth showing up early for.
K.Flay gets the unenviable job of waking up a still-filling arena, and does it with a attitude that makes you wonder why she isn’t headlining rooms this size herself. She’s got proper skin in the game tonight, too, having co-written and featured on Evanescence’s ‘Fight Like a Girl’, so this is very much a friendly crowd. New single ‘Ants’, her first fresh material since 2023’s ‘MONO’, lands exceptionally well, and rightly so this a banger that felt like it was wrote with a room this size in mind, all Nine Inch Nails grit and pointed fury aimed squarely at billionaires and governments. Slinging a white Gibson Explorer one minute and tossing it aside to stomp and rap the next, she rattles through the likes of ‘Blood In The Cut’ with a scrappy honesty, flashes of early Avril in the attitude but the vulnerability underneath all her own. The gamble of leaning on new stuff this early pays off: by the time she’s done, the O2 is firmly onside.
Poppy, on the other hand, is here to mess with your head, and it’s been a joy watching her get to this point. From clawing her way up the bill at Download to a sweaty, sold-out headline show at the Forum earlier this year, she’s earned every inch of this stage, so there’s something genuinely epic about seeing her let loose in a room the size of the O2. She makes the most of it, too. One second she’s cooing through glossy pop like ‘have you had enough?’ and ‘crystallized’, the next she’s snapping into her guttural growl on ‘Scary Mask’ and Bad Omens team-up ‘V.A.N’. Does the sugar-to-scream whiplash always land? Not quite. But you genuinely can’t take your eyes off her, and when she calls for a pit, a decent chunk of the O2 happily obliges.
Then the lights drop, and there’s no question whose night this is. Opening with the title track from this year’s ‘Sanctuary’, Evanescence waste no time proving the new record has already sunk its hooks in, an arena-sized choir bellowing every word back at Amy Lee before the first chorus is done. From there it’s all light and shade: the chugging one-two of ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Rapture’, the timeless wallop of ‘Going Under’, and a proper treat in the shape of rarely aired deep cut ‘Like You’.
And what a production it is. A vast video floor shifts the ground beneath the band all night, guitarists and drummer get hoisted skyward on hydraulic lifts, and by the time ‘Calm Down’ kicks in the whole stage looks fit to burst into flames. Yet for all the pyro and confetti, it’s Lee who commands every eye. Draped in her signature black, choker and eyeliner firmly in place, she sounds, if anything, better than she did 20 years ago.
The guests earn their invites too. K.Flay bounds back out for a frantic ‘Fight Like a Girl’, and later Poppy joins Amy for ‘End of You’, with Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante turning up as a surprise to complete the three-way collab on stage for the very first time. Before that comes the gut-punch of a solo-piano ‘Forever Without You’, Lee alone at the keys and sounding a breath from breaking. ‘Bring Me To Life’ then does exactly what you’d expect, thousands drowning her out on the “wake me up” refrain, yet tellingly it’s dropped mid-set rather than saved for the big finish. Evanescence have far too much class to end on the obvious one. Instead there’s a haunting ‘My Immortal’ and a soaring ‘Wide Open Heart’ to send everyone home wrung out and grinning.
Coasting on nostalgia? Not a chance. On tonight’s evidence, Evanescence’s best years might still be ahead of them.
Leave a Reply