Live review: Palaye Royale, London OVO Arena Wembley

Palaye Royale might have called their latest album Death Or Glory, but for them, 2024 brought both death and glory. Just a few months before that record dropped, their mother – someone so important to the Las Vegas brothers that their fanbase (the Soldiers Of The Royal Council) shares her initials – died of cancer. Determined not to let this year be their annus horribilis, Remington Leith, Emerson Barrett and Sebastian Danzig have pushed on and set about conquering the venue they’ve dreamed of playing since they were schoolboys. “Wembley Arena!” Remington screams, almost jumping for joy. “I have waited since I was 16 years old to say that!”

The motley crew of support bands they’ve assembled to join the party looks a bit odd on paper, but come showtime, it starts making more sense. I See Stars’ glittery electro-rock befits this huge room very nicely, and energetic frontman Devin Oliver is clearly thrilled to be here, while their set-closer Anomaly feels like a mighty statement of intent as they gun for an even bigger second act of their career. The Hunna, meanwhile, haven’t always meshed well on alt. bills, but tonight they finally feel at home. The towering Fugazi and the venomous Trash cement just how great they can sound on massive stages, but their performance has levelled up too, with frontman Ryan Potter bounding down the runway with all the excitement of a child on Christmas morning.

“Wakey wakey, London! Shall we give ’em summat to talk about?!” Hot Milk’s Han Mee roars by means of an introduction. Impressively for a support band, their set feels like its own event. Bursting with heart, humour and spiky riffs, both she and co-conspirator Jim Shaw perform the likes of the hulking Horror Show and soaring Breathing Underwater like icons-in-waiting – even when Han does the Macarena to one of her own songs. Give it another album or two, and this lot will be sticking a firecracker up Wembley’s arse as headliners in their own right.

Just past 9pm, it’s Palaye’s turn. Playing Wembley was a bold step and it’s not sold out, but they’ve garnered a larger audience than many of their peers have managed in the UK’s most famous venue. Production-wise, it’s dazzling – there’s enough pyro to fry your eyebrows, giant balloons, a monstrous lighting rig and one big screen for each brother, so you can have an eye on all three at the same time. And yet for such a stylish and well-dressed band, this show doesn’t favour style over substance. Explosive opener Nightmares crackles with determination, No Love In LA oozes swagger and Pretty Strangers is a vintage discotheque thrill from start to finish.

Tonight is essentially a collage of carefully curated moments. There’s a vulnerable airing of Oblivion, with Remington humbly singing cross-legged on the stage, and an agonisingly bittersweet Fever Dream dedicated to their late mother – “She always told me this would be a memorial show for her and I never believed it till she was gone.”

It’s when they go daredevil mode, though, that things get really exciting. Remington sailing across the crowd on a dinghy for Showbiz is impossible not to grin at, while during Lonely, he does a tightrope walk across the seating area railing and jumps onto the dinghy held up by punters. (This writer got roped in to help – the thump of his landing was only slightly terrifying.)

Palaye Royale have always aspired to the theatrical, and tonight, they dial into that more than ever. It’s live music and theatre all at once, and it represents them at their very best.

Read this next:

• Palaye Royale: “This is the world we’ve created and the world that we get to live in – and it’s beautiful”
• Remington Leith: “If I can still be playing music and touring with my brothers when I’m fucking 80 years old, I would love that”
• Why we should keep music in schools, by Palaye Royale's Remington Leith