Pelican, Ni @ Manchester’s YES (The Pink Room) – 13/08/2025

On December 16, 2007, Pelican blew the minds of the dedicated few at Sheffield’s Corporation. In support of their City of Echoes album released in the same year, the band hit town alongside the venerable High on Fire for a co-headlining tour (remember them?). The four-piece, Trevor Shelley de Brauw, Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, and siblings Bryan and Larry Herweg, were so scintillating that I didn’t bother sticking around for High on Fire. To this day, it’s something that I still don’t regret; that’s how good the Pelican live experience was.

Throughout the years, there have been other shows from the Chicago post-metal titans – all without Schroeder-Lebec, who finally returned to the fold following the band’s Australasia reissue via Thrill Jockey, which eventually led Pelican to orchestrate one of their most defining statements as a band, Flickering Resonance – their first full-length release to feature all original members since 2009’s What We All Come To Need.

It’s been eight years since Pelican’s last visit to Manchester, and ahead of their appearance at Britain’s home to esoteric metal in the Arctangent festival, the band plan to flex their muscles in front of a solid turnout in The Pink Room at YES.

Flickering Resonance: In Conversation with Pelican’s Trevor Shelley de Brauw

First though, it’s Lyon four-piece, Ni, new to the shores of Ol’ Blighty. A support band from another country is rare in itself these days as Brexit continues to suffocate creative pursuits outside the ‘realm.’ And of course, Ni aren’t without their own troubles on that score, which we learn towards the end of their blistering set; a run-in at the border with customs that is becoming an all too familiar tale in this post-Brexit shit storm.

It doesn’t deter Ni from dishing out a haemorrhaging brand of math-rock that is like a brutal collision between Yowie and The Ex one minute, psych-infused doom blues inspired by Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention the next. The set is filled with moments that move along by knife’s edge, and while it’s Ni’s first show in Manchester, it most certainly won’t be their last.

It’s a valuable precursor for what’s to come, and with the stage bathed in red, it feels more like Pelican are going launch through the covet art of What We All Come to Need. That apocalypse red, bleeding into the purples of Flickering Resonance, as the band arrive on stage and begin with the album’s steamrolling opener, Gulch. Sounding every bit as electrifying as it is on tape, Shelley de Brauw and Schroeder-Lebec combine for crunching, endorphin rush-like guitar interplay.

Through the Debris: 19 Years with Pelican’s Australasia

And while the road burning grooves of Cascading Crescent and Flickering Resonance’s shining beacon in Pining For Ever continue to illuminate the excellence of Pelican’s latest release, they look back in the rearview mirror by dropping the monolith that is Drought. The lynchpin of their full-length debut Australasia, I’d wager that it’s the first time many in the crowd have heard the song here in a live setting. Alongside Larry Herweg’s catapulting kickdrums, the band’s standard drop D tunings pummelling the internal organs with new force.

While briefly returning to the present with an ear-splitting rendition of Indelible, the band continues rolling back the years, with the hypnotic heaviness of Strung Up from the Sky and The Cliff to the searing one-two of Ephemeral and The Creeper. While some may have harboured hope for a Mammoth or Red Ran Amber, the back catalogue delivered feels so refined that it reaffirms the synergy that Schroeder-Lebec has with this band, feeling as though he never left it.

Finishing with Wandering Mind, it’s Pelican lighting up the path that leads to their decisive future. Both in sound and theme, it feels like a new dawn for one of post-metal’s crucial acts, and while Shelley de Brauw’s heartfelt thank you to the crowd underlines how important community is within DIY culture, it feels like a walking miracle that bands like Pelican can still play shows in this country. Amid the chaos of Brexit and every other obstacle that has been placed in art’s way during this decade, not only seeing Pelican in a room, but also at the peak of their powers makes nights like this even more special.