LIVE FROM THE PIT: Himalayas, Luna Bay and Juju

The HIMALAYAS ‘BAD STAR’ tour kicked off in Leeds almost exactly a month after the release of its titular second album. A follow up to their 2023 album ‘From Hell to Here’, several singles and first Ep Ecstasy released in 2016, since then they have had a meteoric rise, from working with members of AC/DC to touring with the Foo Fighters and supporting Manic Street Preachers.

Their own tour has taken the Welsh-based four piece band across the country, playing Leeds, Glasgow, Brighton and Cardiff among others with a veritable host of openers crossing style and genre. BAD STAR’s London leg took place at The Garage, one of the capital’s more accessible venues due its location, layout and commitment to inclusion. Doors opened at seven, and the first opener came on at a prompt 7:30.

With an almost bewitching sense of stage presence Juju and her three piece band (Abi, Jess and Adam) brought a haunting energy to the stage. The group dressed in all black, while Juju’s military-style jacked in particular embodied a chiquer version of every teenage emo’s fantasy of somehow channelling the energy of a My Chemical Romance music video. When it came to the music itself, these vibes were only amplified by a combination of strong backing and brooding vocals.

The performance was powerful, poised and professional, it's unsurprising that Juju has already been picked up by BBC Introducing Bristol. It’s clear that when it comes to gothic rock this is an up-and-coming name to keep an eye on.

Next up were Luna Bay, an alternative rock band consisting of Connor O'Mara, Sammy Penniston, Rye Milligan and Alex Ross. Luna Bay have been playing together since university, with endorsements from Jack Saunders, BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Introducing and Radio X. This impressive list of accolades was clear in the way that they took to the stage.

Their set was a little more laidback, leaning more towards the indie side of alternative while still bringing an enjoyable energy. Songs such as ‘Hometown’ and ‘Video Star’ brought a fun sense of 2010s teen drama soundtrack nostalgia with the right balance of edginess and good humour to still sound culturally current.

The band also spent more time engaging with the crowd personally than the other acts, talking about their experience opening for HIMALAYAS the night before for the Brighton show, and asking fans how far they’d come to see the gig.

Finally, HIMALAYAS themselves took to the stage at 9:15. Their set, spanning discography from 2017 to 2025, was full of cult classic songs both old and new, encapsulated in a whopping hour and 15 minutes. 

From the moment the HIMALAYAS set foot on the stage, the venue was filled with charged anticipation, one person even ran straight into the centre of the crowd to try and form a pit before the first song even started. 

The band kicked off with BAD STAR’s opening track ‘Beneath the Barrel’, a gradual build with a heavy focus on acoustics that slowly built into ‘Alone’ from Hell to Here, before jumping back to BAD STAR for ‘Hung Up’. Despite dipping between eras, each song transitioned with a seamless sense of continuity. Three songs later and by the time ‘Somebody Else’ started an animated mosh pit began to form, as the energy from HIMALAYAS' performance became contagious. 

For visuals, the band were dressed in matching black boilersuits sporting the HIMALAYAS logo. While the lighting engineer pursued a very strobe-heavy approach to covering each track, with bright lights shifting in colour, size and shape in time with each note. This worked best with songs such as ‘Thank God I’m Not You’, their most well-known single with at the time of writing over 51 thousand streams on Spotify alone, where the performance was a pitch perfect rendition of the studio recording. Though it was equally impactful on lesser-known tracks such as ‘Afterlife’, which deserves a similar number of streams in the future.

While there may have been a discrepancy on streams between songs online, there was no similar favouritism within the venue, and particularly not in the pit. Fans clapped and cheered enthusiastically for every single song, with the clear passion of a dedicated cult-following who had been familiar with the discography for years. Attendees varying from middle-aged men to the alternative teens and a shirtless man wearing light-up sunglasses. Despite being a broad church, all were united by a strong bond to the HIMALAYAS sound that was heartwarming to witness.

When it became time to encore, the band ended on not one, not two but three farewell tracks, starting with ‘Cave Paintings’ before returning for ‘Flatline’ and ending on a mashup of ‘From Hell to Here’ and ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’. This was incredibly fun, particularly for those in the pit, and included an impressive guitar solo during ‘Cave Paintings’. But on a practical level, a long encore was probably not the right move for a London-based venue.

Overall it was clear that all three artists put on a show to remember, with nonstop top quality performances, production and passion. We can only hope to see them all on bigger stages in the future.

Words: Q Cummins

Photos: Rebekah India