Six years after their last London headline show, coldrain walked back into Camden looking far more battle-hardened than when they last squeezed into The Black Heart. Since then they have undergone a major management and label reshuffle, re-recorded their debut, and released their new EP ‘OPTIMIZE’, the band’s first worldwide release since ‘Vena’ and their first under Century Media and Sony Music Japan. Helped by the renewed attention sparked by 2024’s ‘Vengeance’, the task at Electric Ballroom was simple: remind a 1,500-cap London crowd why Japan still treats them as standard bearers for loud rock, and show where this new chapter is heading.
Before any of that, Hokkaido’s NOISEMAKER, making their European debut on the tour, were handed a near-full room and used every inch of it. A staple of big festival stages in Japan, they’re a band that thrives the bigger the stage gets, and even in a mid-size London venue you could see why. Opening with the revved-up heavy riffs of ‘Something New’, they immediately lifted the atmosphere above typical support-band territory, with frontman AG wasting no time getting up on the barrier to whip up the crowd. Knowing the track was written about smashing through life’s “walls” gave extra context to a crowd watching a Japanese band try to do exactly that in front of them.
HIDE’s looping riff in ‘MAJOR-MINOR’ heated the pot further before the band’s biggest anthem ‘NAME’ landed mid-set. By the second run of the hook, the crowd response was edging into headline material. AG sensed it too, telling the room they’d be back soon “as the headline next time”, a line that earned a full-room roar.
“Unfortunately, Masato can’t join us on this one tonight”, AG teased as he introduced 2024’s ‘Supernatural’. The room popped when Masato walked out regardless, and seeing both vocalists trade lines on a London stage made clear the significance of two loud-rock lifers who’ve run parallel for nearly twenty years finally sharing the spotlight on foreign ground as they push for international recognition.
The shimmering, almost sci-fi glide of ‘LAST FOREVER’ wrapped around the Ballroom before they closed with ‘Better Days’. Written in the early COVID period, its open, optimistic chorus left the venue feeling like this appearance was a first proper step rather than a one-off.
NOISEMAKER’s sound is a love child between post-hardcore and chart rock, with electric hooks that have the potential to light a venue on fire. Tonight was only a short teaser, so the next visit will reveal whether they can carry a London show on their own shoulders. If this performance is any indication, they’re already outgrowing the third slot on a poster.
Then came France’s Revnoir, swapping NOISEMAKER’s sugar-rush energy for something colder and more machine-tooled. Pulsing electronics, razor-edged drops, and a drummer who seemed determined to rattle teeth did most of the talking. They briefly flirted with a phone-light moment before slamming the door on it with another drop that blew the dust off the rafters. Not the flashiest set of the night, but absolutely the kind that keeps the pit simmering until the headliner shows up.
By the time the house lights dropped for coldrain, the crowd were well and truly warmed up. ‘FREE FALL’ detonated the set with thick riffs and drums that made the floor jolt, an immediate statement for the ‘OPTIMIZE’ material. The song’s frustration with falsified, over-polished life found a direct physical answer in the pit, which opened immediately.
RELATED: coldrain release new EP ‘OPTIMIZE’ via Century Media Records
The “anthem for the imperfect” ‘INCOMPLETE’ followed, even heavier and more suffocating than on record before ‘PARADISE (Kill the Silence)’, born out of pandemic-era silent crowds, marked the first full-venue chant-along.
‘The Revelation’ still hits like the moment their international push truly began. A decade on, its mix of melodic hooks and pit inducing metalcore bite sits neatly alongside newer songs, proof that the central idea of coldrain has not really changed since those early Hopeless Records days.
‘REVOLUTION’ delivered the nu-metal energy with its semi-rapped, Linkin Park-esque verses, before new cut ‘DIGITOLL’ provided another conceptual deep dive into the EP. The groove was sly and almost danceable, threaded with electronic touches, while Masato spat lines about copy-paste culture and the cost of constant connectivity.
From there, the set dropped into back-to-back tracks from 2022’s ‘Nonnegative’. “Do you guys like anime?” Masato asked before ‘Bloody Power Fame’—the theme for Netflix’s Bastard!!—came in hot with rapid snare strikes and a menacing sense of threat.
The low murmur of ‘Here With You’ drifted out next, swelling into life as the guitars kicked in, before ‘Boys and Girls’ pulled everything back to bare bones; just clean strings and Masato’s voice carrying a reflection on ageing without feeling any more grown. For a moment the Ballroom stopped moving, letting the weight of both songs land without the noise that surrounded the rest of the set.
Their cover of Alanis Morissette’s 1998 ‘Uninvited’ pulled the mood sideways again. The band kept the original’s dark textures and uneasy atmosphere in the verses, Masato almost whisper-quiet at points, before slamming the choruses with enough heaviness to make you forget this started life on a ’98 film soundtrack. It closed with the biggest guitar solo of the night, cutting the last thread connecting the quieter section to the oncoming heavy hitters.
‘Cut Me’ flipped the mood fast. One riff in and the floor opened properly, its built-in frustration boiling over into the first wall of death of the night. ‘Rabbit Hole’ doubled down, the set’s most feral moment, a full sprint of guitars with a chorus simple enough for half the room to bark back on instinct. Masato goaded the crowd with “Is the mosh pit tired?” as the set headed into its home stretch.
Anime favourite ‘MAYDAY’ needed no introduction. The sampled distress call alone sent the room up a level, and even without former Crystal Lake frontman Ryo, Masato handled the harsher parts effortlessly while the crowd shouted back whatever they could manage.
Keeping the momentum going, ‘CHASING SHADOWS’, all pipe-toned synths and another oversized chorus, closed the main set before the band returned for the tour-and-EP namesake ‘OPTIMIZE’. Heavy, concise and polished just enough that its critique of optimisation culture doesn’t feel disingenuous, it already feels baked into the show’s DNA. Like the rest of the new EP, the crowd treated it as core material rather than something to sit through before the hits.
‘ENVY’ pulled the clock back to the ‘Fateless’ days, ripping just as hard as it did then. The chunky riffing and that driving pre-chorus groove—the kind you could two-step to if the pit weren’t already a pile-up—sent the room into full-voice chants. It was the sort of late-set eruption that makes you think: alright, how’s the closer meant to top this? ‘Vengeance’ answered that without breaking a sweat. For a song tied to an anime about blood-for-blood justice, it’s surprisingly upbeat on the surface, which somehow turned belting “I’ll make you beg, make you pray / until your heart stops…” into one of the night’s strangest feel-good highs. As it swelled into a full-scale metalcore curtain call, the whole room emptied the tank, giving the band the full-throated send-off they’d clearly been aiming for.
The way coldrain stacked new EP cuts against decade-old staples showed a band fully in control of both their history and where they’re heading next. Masato’s switch from guttural to clean might draw the ear, but it sits on top of Y.K.C.’s lead work, Sugi’s rhythm lines, RxYxO’s floor-shaking bass, and Katsuma’s power behind the kit, a line-up unchanged since 2007. It’s a long-haul partnership, and a big part of why the heavy hits still land this hard.
For a long-delayed return to the top of a London bill, it landed like a torch-raiser for loud rock on the international stage. NOISEMAKER used their slot to put themselves on the map, and coldrain showed that the arena-scale operation they run in Japan still hits with full force inside four Camden walls. If the aim was to re-establish their footing in the UK, they walked out having done exactly that.
With the OPTIMIZE EU tour rolling on through the rest of mainland Europe across the next two weeks, there’s still plenty of chances to catch the band while they’re running this hot.
Photos by Charles Shepherd
coldrain
OPTIMIZE
Release Date: 24/10/2025
Label: Century Media Records
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music
