It’s the beginning of February, so it’s about damn time for every punk and emo kid to wake up out of our winter blues. Hot Milk must’ve had the same idea, bringing their short Loud & Fast tour through Europe this week. The Manchester band brings their short tour to an end in Amsterdam, for their very first headline show in the city.
The evening starts out strong with Last Hounds. The amount of moshpits already forming in the small venue, is a good indication of how loud tonight will be. Lead vocalist Mikey Selcher commands the stage like a tornado, twirling and jumping around non-stop, and he ends up crowdsurfing as well. The OZ never offers a barricade, which makes it the perfect place to go all out in stagediving and the like. It doesn’t feel like a regular Wednesday night, with the crowd already giving it their all through the fast hardcore punk set.
For a band that’s been around since 2018, it’s surprising this night is the very first headline show in Amsterdam for Hot Milk. They did open for You Me At Six in the same room in 2019, and for Green Day in the Ziggo Dome last July, so the city isn’t a complete mystery to them.
Seeing how the crowd in Amsterdam responds to the band from the first to the last note, they absolutely made the right decision to end their European tour here. There’s hardly a phone in sight, and there’s a non-stop barrage of crowdsurfers and stagedivers. The sense of camaraderie throughout the venue can be found wherever you stand, whether it’s in the front catching divers, in the pit with the moshers or on the stage between the band members.
Hannah “Han” Mee and Jim Shaw both take on the role of lead vocalist, and the chemistry between the four band members can be felt all around, with the crowd and band feeding off each other’s energy throughout the night. There’s some on stage banter between the leads, with Jim claiming Han licked his eyeball and she continues to joke about licking other salty things… like salt lamps. Get your mind out of the gutter!
Most of the show went hard as hell, with the rock band playing a lot of their newer record Corporation P.O.P, one of their heavier attempts to date. They set the place ablaze in the process, following their very English anthem-like “Insubordinate Ingerland” with the poppier “Candy Coated Lie$.” Han mentions the 2019 song was left off their setlist for the longest time, and it does feel a little out of place in their current musical style, but gets everyone going just as much regardless. We slow it down a little later during “BREATHING UNDERWATER,” to give everyone the chance to catch their breath before going all out again.
By the end, the crowd is thoroughly baptized with drinks from both the band and the pit, and bassist Tom Paton also went for a stage dive during the last minute of the show. It’s one of the shows that feels like it a classic punk show that happened 20-something years ago, but it doesn’t feel dated in the slightest. If anything, the band brings an energy greatly needed during more shows nowadays. There’s intimacy in small venues like this, and you can’t experience shows the same way in bigger venues, but with how alive this night was, it would be truly shocking if the Manchester band doesn’t get a lot bigger very soon.
When the band exits the stage before their encore, the “we want more” chants from the floor have never felt as genuine as they do now. Hot Milk set the bar high for the rest of the year with their European tour closer, as this is already an early contender for one of the hardest shows the Melkweg OZ will see in 2026.
GALLERY: Hot Milk with The Last Hounds at Melkweg in Amsterdam, Netherlands (February 11, 2026)
