Arcane Dimensions Tour 2026 Epica/Amaranthe/Charlotte Wessels - O2 Academy Glasgow 21st January 2026

We have not heard that much from Charlotte as a solo artist, although she has been prolific on Patreon and released the slightly ethereal ‘Tales from Six Feet Under’ albums a few years ago. With the recent release of ‘The Obsession’, she has brought the heavy back in collaboration with some former Delain band-mates and she appears to have hit a sweet spot, blending some atmospheric symphonic-lite offerings with a harder edge that packs a muscular punch at times.

The ballad ‘Crying Room’ featured an emotional guitar solo by Timo Somers, while ‘Soft Revolution’ featured some marvellous harmonies between Charlotte and her keyboard player. As well as songs from ‘The Obsession,’ there are some even newer numbers, of which ‘After Us, the Flood’ was a highlight – the cinematic video for this new song is well worth checking out. The set concluded with the powerful ‘The Exorcism’ during which Charlotte got so much into the “grunting” segment that she had a “wardrobe malfunction” and her top had to come off, although fortunately, her under-garments ensured her dignity was not unduly comprised. It was a triumphant return to Scotland for Charlotte and it will be very interesting to hear further new music in the same vein.

Epica have a strong pedigree in symphonic rock and some of their continental shows with orchestral backing look absolutely phenomenal. With last year’s album ‘Aspiral’, the band re-imagined and renovated their approach with a slightly more direct contemporary metal sound and that was reflected in the first few numbers. The visuals are different too, most noticeably with Simone Simons, who started in the shadows looking reminiscent of a Scottish Widows advert, before divesting the robes to reveal a new black-clad leather approach and futuristic glasses.

The band’s visuals were excellent throughout, featuring very effective use of a giant video-screen backdrop and HD ribbon-strips at the front. An interesting and distinctive intro video segment set the scene and included a request for the audience to ‘stay in the moment’ and refrain from phone usage. Needless to say, that did not deter the usual phone-wankers, but I doubt if their footage was useful, as the band performed in the dark for most of the night, often in silhouette against the bright screen lights.

‘Never Enough’ made a welcome return to the set and Charlotte Wessels was another welcome returnee when she popped up to duet on ‘Sirens – of Blood and Water’. Simone donned an evening dress for one vocal showcase and the band really stretched out their symphonic chops on the snappily-titled epic ‘The Grand Saga of Existence – A New Age Dawns, Part IX’. Epica certainly went down well with the moshers and crowd-surfers and everyone else, and the band definitely added something a bit different to their previous performances in this city.

The down-side of having such an elaborate stage set in use for the first part of a co-headline bill was that it took a very long time to dismantle Epica’s rig and assemble Amaranthe’s more modest, but still impressive, stage set-up, so there was some loss of momentum going into the final set of the evening.

Amaranthe hit the stage hard with an onslaught of their trademark danceable modern metal music. With three front-line singers incorporating female lead and both clean and harsh male vocals, the band delivered a lively, crunching and syncopated wall of sound. Elize Ryd has been a constant in the band, and it is usually her who brings a bit of colour to proceedings, but even she was black-clad and intense this time. Highlights included ‘Viral’ and ‘PvP’ which is a song commissioned for the Swedish E-sports team, and a new song called ‘Chaos Theory’ which had a very nice bounce to it.

The moshers and crowd-surfers tried hard to keep up but it was a ferocious onslaught that only ended after five hours in the hall, which is a big ask on a school night. It was quite a show though.