When THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE played La Belle Angele on Sunday 26th October 2025, Edinburgh had worked hard to freeze and soak us all into submission. The title of the venue "the beautiful angel"—was a snarky let-down as goths shuffled in the door, dripping eyeliner and despair. One guy's perfectly coiffed hair had been pushed down by the savage harshness of Scottish weather. Another was cinching their velvet jacket in like a filthy rag. This is what religion tastes like at 7 PM on Sunday when you're fifty two and your knees hurt. In here, though, the club shone like a dream preserved in a space between a Hot Topic and a weird dollhouse.
The bar was doing great business in gin, the unofficial drink of people who've long since forgotten lying to themselves about needing to "loosen up" for a concert. THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE are less a group and more a time capsule that never really got lost. They've been doing this for over twenty years now—this fizzy-splotched, synth-saturated melodrama of broken hearts—and it continues to work because they understand the force of myth. Everyone else from the mid-2000s tried to rebrand themselves as ironic fathers or crypto-interested podcasters, TBM doubled down. Same aesthetic, same dedication to emotional overstatement, same refusal to pretend like you outgrow it. The issue with nostalgia, however, is that it's embarrassing. We're supposed to roll our eyes at our teens, erase the LiveJournal posts, act like we never stood for three hours mastering winged eyeliner to see a band play in a club that smelled of Red Bull spilled and shattered dreams.
The Birthday Massacre began with "Night Shift", which thudded like a neon requiem—half candyfloss, half corpse makeup. The synthesizers burbled like smoke machines full of existential horror. "Sleep Tonight" interrupted later, its chorus washing over the audience like some collective breath of all who have known what it is to feel things honestly.
The audience had melted into one, flowing mass by "Sleepwalking" and "Superstition"—middle-aged goths singing along as teenagers again in EVANESCENCE-poster-filled rooms and bad poetry. The woman next to me was crying. Not crying—just cold-hard, plain tears, the sort that demand this has nothing to do with the music and everything to do with what the music represents. Maybe it's the version of her she'd imagined herself to be. Maybe it's the friends who'd all stopped answering calls when they'd all gotten "real jobs." There was also a marriage proposal which caused more tears. This time, tears of joy mixed with the running of freshly applied mascara.
This is the band for all of the freaks who still get this strange pang of nostalgia when they hear the words "LiveJournal," that mourns the return to the way MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE made existential crisis sound like a halftime show. My Chemical Toilet (Sorry, Romance) gave the game's introduction to a whole generation of kids who had to ask permission before they could possibly be allowed big feelings out there in the world. MCR, though, had that melodramatic detachment, that comic book mythos, that being-in-character thing. Gerard Way wore his heart on his sleeve, sure, but the sleeve was a costume. It was safe because it was in disguise. By "Kill The Lights", I finally understood that TBM are what MCR would have been had they abandoned their leather jackets and lost whatever sense of saving anyone.
But TBM sing to the same children in their twenties, having bought a house they can ill afford and discovered their fear to have no prejudice against eyeliner.
It's a subtle but essential one: MCR wanted to save your soul; TBM only want to give it a comfortable home in which to live. There is something nearly obscene in seeing a cohort of adult men and women in their thirties and their forties bending to this kind of sincerity. We can do better than this. We're supposed to listen to murder podcasts and bob our heads up and down in agreement to whatever algorithmic playlist Spotify determines is right for our "vibe." But there we all were, shoulder to shoulder in a decidedly über-capacity space, bobbing our heads to tunes of melancholy and darkness as if 2006 and anything else was once more possible.
Chibi, the ghost ringmaster of all time, has that kind of charm that can turn even mannered Scottish goths into cult acolytes. She grins like a ghost remembering human existence. You don't often get a front woman who can survey a horizon of PVC corsets and black lipstick and make everyone feel spied upon and not scrutinized.
She could have sold us all a coffin and we would have loved the regard. There's a commerciality to her stage that teeters on the edge of the uncomfortable. No congratulatory theatrics, no pretences of modesty, she’s merely a woman in her own space, acutely conscious that every single individual in this room has paid money for the privilege of sitting in on something polite society is otherwise well-trained to button up. She wields that sensitivity as a scalpel. With "The Vanishing Game" and "Lovers End", however, the band had it nailed, with just a touch of self-awareness to see how dorky it is. The bassist looked like someone who'd been playing that long he'd at last achieved some sort of zen plateau.
The guitarist's fingers bore the muscle memory of a player who plays these songs so many times that they become second nature to him.
This is what artistry is like when it has been sharpened to the point of almost spiritual fervour. At one point, someone beside me exclaimed, "I love you, Chibi!" with the sort of arid seriousness that only the gin and tonics and ten years of repressed despair can allow. The audience laughed—not at him, but because we've all been that guy. Some of us still are.
"Destroyer" exploded in heroic peril; "Under Your Spell" swayed with agonizing suffering. And then "Pins and Needles"--still the best synth-goth tune ever dreamed up—hit, and the room literally bounced up off the floor. Everybody screamed the song out, off-tune and completely sincere. You could sense the overall feeling of catharsis in the room: irony was actually dead, and nobody cared. This is something they don't teach you when you're growing up: you don't actually grow out of the things that saved you. You learn to be ashamed of them.
You learn to giggle first, before everyone else. You learn to insert the words "guilty pleasure" into your vocabulary, rather than just "pleasure," to excuse the things that make you live. But here, in such places as this one, the apologetic squinch is abandoned. No apologies are offered. Nobody is guilty. By the time they reached "Happy Birthday", it was catharsis in plain sight—a hymn that imbues sentiment and mourning with a kind of religious fervour. Chibi delivered it with an unusual euphoria, half-teasing, half-mourning innocence. It's the only hymn that comes to mind that employs "happy" as an illness. Everyone was crying in earnest now, and no one cared who noticed. What is armour for if you never take it off?
The charm of The Birthday Massacre is that they've finally figured it out, something that most bands will spend the rest of their careers attempting to find: they know who they are and who they're playing it for. And then "Red Stars" and "Blue"—two songs that're literally an epilogue to this perpetual puberty.
In a world in which the truth is employed as a punchline, in which it's more popular to be talking about the fact that you don't care about something than not caring about anything at all, perhaps that is the punkiest thing that's left. They're not here to save the world. They're not here to save you. They're just creating room for the part of you that never did learn how to do normalcy very, very well. The part that still appreciates the fog machines and purple lights. The part that gets it, deep within its heart of hearts, that becoming grown-up was always a charade.
MCR would quote that teens scare the wits out of everyone. But The Birthday Massacre? They're here when those teens grow up—and terrorize themselves. When they're at home and the phone is ringing. When they look in the mirror and their parent's faces stare back, but the music remains unchanged. And on a genuine note? That's scarier than anything Gerard Way ever wrote.
We scattered out into the October darkness, satisfied and dressed in black, already anticipating the next chance to meet up and revel in our common fate. Some accompanied us to the local chip shop, because even existential terror cannot do without proper fuel. Whilst others went on to the Cowgate's establishments, hoping to extend the evening's fellowship with the dark through the ageless Scottish ritual of drinking. until great ideas come or oblivion sets in (whichever comes first).
THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE, undoubtedly, packed up their equipment with the same weary professionalism that all road musicians have to possess in order to be ready to decamp to the next town, the next venue, the next set of devotees clamouring for their daily dose of cultured despair. It's an odd existence, really, to travel the world warning folks that life is sad by nature, but at least it sounds pretty nice. Words: Matt Denny.
The bar was doing great business in gin, the unofficial drink of people who've long since forgotten lying to themselves about needing to "loosen up" for a concert. THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE are less a group and more a time capsule that never really got lost. They've been doing this for over twenty years now—this fizzy-splotched, synth-saturated melodrama of broken hearts—and it continues to work because they understand the force of myth. Everyone else from the mid-2000s tried to rebrand themselves as ironic fathers or crypto-interested podcasters, TBM doubled down. Same aesthetic, same dedication to emotional overstatement, same refusal to pretend like you outgrow it. The issue with nostalgia, however, is that it's embarrassing. We're supposed to roll our eyes at our teens, erase the LiveJournal posts, act like we never stood for three hours mastering winged eyeliner to see a band play in a club that smelled of Red Bull spilled and shattered dreams.
The Birthday Massacre began with "Night Shift", which thudded like a neon requiem—half candyfloss, half corpse makeup. The synthesizers burbled like smoke machines full of existential horror. "Sleep Tonight" interrupted later, its chorus washing over the audience like some collective breath of all who have known what it is to feel things honestly.
The audience had melted into one, flowing mass by "Sleepwalking" and "Superstition"—middle-aged goths singing along as teenagers again in EVANESCENCE-poster-filled rooms and bad poetry. The woman next to me was crying. Not crying—just cold-hard, plain tears, the sort that demand this has nothing to do with the music and everything to do with what the music represents. Maybe it's the version of her she'd imagined herself to be. Maybe it's the friends who'd all stopped answering calls when they'd all gotten "real jobs." There was also a marriage proposal which caused more tears. This time, tears of joy mixed with the running of freshly applied mascara.
This is the band for all of the freaks who still get this strange pang of nostalgia when they hear the words "LiveJournal," that mourns the return to the way MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE made existential crisis sound like a halftime show. My Chemical Toilet (Sorry, Romance) gave the game's introduction to a whole generation of kids who had to ask permission before they could possibly be allowed big feelings out there in the world. MCR, though, had that melodramatic detachment, that comic book mythos, that being-in-character thing. Gerard Way wore his heart on his sleeve, sure, but the sleeve was a costume. It was safe because it was in disguise. By "Kill The Lights", I finally understood that TBM are what MCR would have been had they abandoned their leather jackets and lost whatever sense of saving anyone.
But TBM sing to the same children in their twenties, having bought a house they can ill afford and discovered their fear to have no prejudice against eyeliner.
It's a subtle but essential one: MCR wanted to save your soul; TBM only want to give it a comfortable home in which to live. There is something nearly obscene in seeing a cohort of adult men and women in their thirties and their forties bending to this kind of sincerity. We can do better than this. We're supposed to listen to murder podcasts and bob our heads up and down in agreement to whatever algorithmic playlist Spotify determines is right for our "vibe." But there we all were, shoulder to shoulder in a decidedly über-capacity space, bobbing our heads to tunes of melancholy and darkness as if 2006 and anything else was once more possible.
Chibi, the ghost ringmaster of all time, has that kind of charm that can turn even mannered Scottish goths into cult acolytes. She grins like a ghost remembering human existence. You don't often get a front woman who can survey a horizon of PVC corsets and black lipstick and make everyone feel spied upon and not scrutinized.
She could have sold us all a coffin and we would have loved the regard. There's a commerciality to her stage that teeters on the edge of the uncomfortable. No congratulatory theatrics, no pretences of modesty, she’s merely a woman in her own space, acutely conscious that every single individual in this room has paid money for the privilege of sitting in on something polite society is otherwise well-trained to button up. She wields that sensitivity as a scalpel. With "The Vanishing Game" and "Lovers End", however, the band had it nailed, with just a touch of self-awareness to see how dorky it is. The bassist looked like someone who'd been playing that long he'd at last achieved some sort of zen plateau.
The guitarist's fingers bore the muscle memory of a player who plays these songs so many times that they become second nature to him.
This is what artistry is like when it has been sharpened to the point of almost spiritual fervour. At one point, someone beside me exclaimed, "I love you, Chibi!" with the sort of arid seriousness that only the gin and tonics and ten years of repressed despair can allow. The audience laughed—not at him, but because we've all been that guy. Some of us still are.
"Destroyer" exploded in heroic peril; "Under Your Spell" swayed with agonizing suffering. And then "Pins and Needles"--still the best synth-goth tune ever dreamed up—hit, and the room literally bounced up off the floor. Everybody screamed the song out, off-tune and completely sincere. You could sense the overall feeling of catharsis in the room: irony was actually dead, and nobody cared. This is something they don't teach you when you're growing up: you don't actually grow out of the things that saved you. You learn to be ashamed of them.
You learn to giggle first, before everyone else. You learn to insert the words "guilty pleasure" into your vocabulary, rather than just "pleasure," to excuse the things that make you live. But here, in such places as this one, the apologetic squinch is abandoned. No apologies are offered. Nobody is guilty. By the time they reached "Happy Birthday", it was catharsis in plain sight—a hymn that imbues sentiment and mourning with a kind of religious fervour. Chibi delivered it with an unusual euphoria, half-teasing, half-mourning innocence. It's the only hymn that comes to mind that employs "happy" as an illness. Everyone was crying in earnest now, and no one cared who noticed. What is armour for if you never take it off?
The charm of The Birthday Massacre is that they've finally figured it out, something that most bands will spend the rest of their careers attempting to find: they know who they are and who they're playing it for. And then "Red Stars" and "Blue"—two songs that're literally an epilogue to this perpetual puberty.
In a world in which the truth is employed as a punchline, in which it's more popular to be talking about the fact that you don't care about something than not caring about anything at all, perhaps that is the punkiest thing that's left. They're not here to save the world. They're not here to save you. They're just creating room for the part of you that never did learn how to do normalcy very, very well. The part that still appreciates the fog machines and purple lights. The part that gets it, deep within its heart of hearts, that becoming grown-up was always a charade.
MCR would quote that teens scare the wits out of everyone. But The Birthday Massacre? They're here when those teens grow up—and terrorize themselves. When they're at home and the phone is ringing. When they look in the mirror and their parent's faces stare back, but the music remains unchanged. And on a genuine note? That's scarier than anything Gerard Way ever wrote.
We scattered out into the October darkness, satisfied and dressed in black, already anticipating the next chance to meet up and revel in our common fate. Some accompanied us to the local chip shop, because even existential terror cannot do without proper fuel. Whilst others went on to the Cowgate's establishments, hoping to extend the evening's fellowship with the dark through the ageless Scottish ritual of drinking. until great ideas come or oblivion sets in (whichever comes first).
THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE, undoubtedly, packed up their equipment with the same weary professionalism that all road musicians have to possess in order to be ready to decamp to the next town, the next venue, the next set of devotees clamouring for their daily dose of cultured despair. It's an odd existence, really, to travel the world warning folks that life is sad by nature, but at least it sounds pretty nice. Words: Matt Denny.
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