Live Review: Madina Lake live at The Fleece, Bristol

For the first time in almost eight years, Madina Lake returned to the UK.

This time they’re back to celebrate 20 years as a band and opened the tour in Bristol with support from Greywind and Bad Luck.

Bad Luck at The Fleece, Bristol. Credit: Lizi Birt

First up was Bad Luck. It was the New Yorkers’ first UK show and they put on a good set.

I think you could see a bit of nerves between songs with the chatter with the crowd being a bit awkward at times, but their punk rock style got the crowd started.

Greywind at The Fleece, Bristol. Credit: Lizi Birt

Greywind took to the stage with a dramatic walk on but an error saw the band head back of stage to do it again with encouragement from the crowd. Not the greatest of starts from a performance point of view but they rolled with it and it didn’t really affect the set. You could see Steph was having a great time on stage powering through some of the band’s most personal tracks with good showwomanship.

Madina Lake at The Fleece, Bristol. Credit: Lizi Birt

At times the sound didn’t seem the greatest for the first two bands but luckily that was improved for Madina Lake who took to the stage to the crowd’s delight and jumped straight into Love is War, the most recent of their back catalogue to be released that made it into the setlist.

You could tell that despite being a band for 20 years and not really touring too much over the last decade or so, they still love being on stage and performing, with Nathan getting into the crowd towards the end of the set via a stage dive.

Madina Lake at The Fleece, Bristol. Credit: Lizi Birt

The focus of the set was definitely the band’s first two albums with the likes of Adalia, One Last Kiss, House of Cards, Stars and Pandora featuring, to the delight of the crowd.

Sonically they were on point, with every note hit perfectly and Nathan sounding just as good as he did on record all those years ago.