Hot Mulligan started their The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still 2026 World Tour in Brussels the day before, making their way up to the Netherlands, for a sold out Amsterdam show on February 21st. It’s a Saturday night, so it’s time for the Melkweg OZ to lose control.
The crowd does exactly that from the first band onwards. Bony Macaroni is just scheduled to open this Amsterdam show, but with the way the fans respond, it’s for sure a loss for all the other upcoming shows that don’t get to experience them. The Dutch band starts their set with Kesha’s “Die Young,” seamlessly transitioning in their own song, immediately getting people to bop their heads to them. Halfway through their (too short) set, the first mild moshpits begin to form, and the first couple of people start to crowdsurf as well.
The British math rock band Delta Sleep brought a completely different vibe to the evening. The slightly unconventional band manages to rock so hard, vocalist Devin Yüceil immediately loses a string on his guitar. Their dark and dramatic storytelling makes it easy to dream away, getting lost in the music throughout. The warm globes of light on the stage and darker blue venue lights make it almost meditative.
Apparently, Hot Mulligan can’t get enough of Europe. After supporting on the late 2025 European Pierce The Veil tour, they have come back almost immediately, now finally on their own headline tour. Fortunately for them, the fans can’t get enough of them either. Their fourth record The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still was released in August 2025, and we start the show with seven songs off it immediately.
Playing so many new songs right at the start would seem like an odd choice, but most of the band’s songs are under 3 minutes long, so they speed through their 24 song setlist pretty rapidly, only playing for a little over an hour in total. We begin with the slower intro song “Moving to Bed Bug Island,” before going all out on the tempo and not slowing down until the very end. From the second song on, which is their new popular single “And A Big Load” already, the crowdsurfing is almost non-stop.
Now, the first rule at a Hot Mulligan show seems pretty clear after a couple of songs: you need to start your crowdsurfing early in the song, to avoid being ridiculed on stage by vocalist Nathan “Tades” Sanville. One of the men that ended up on stage in between songs tried to escape the singer, but the crowd understood the assignment and brought him right back to the stage. The band doesn’t waste a lot of time in between songs though, only talking shit every now and then (they took too many mushrooms last time they were here and saw God), so the fans can go right back to their surfing. As expected with a crowd like this, phones and caps start flying all over the place, and somehow a couple of €5 bills are handed to the band. “Tades” states they don’t need the tips, but guitarist Chris Freeman jokes he’s holding out for a bit more anyway.
The midwest emo band is quite the phenomenon, with a lot of new acts trying to emulate their style and music, but it’s the heart and sincerity beneath the fun exterior that makes them so wildly unique. From a very shallow point of view they look like any other pop-punk band, using humor as a coping mechanism and honoring the longstanding tradition of emo bands naming their songs with completely unrelated and deceiving titles like “Monica Lewinskibidi” or “Featuring Mark Hoppus.” If you don’t look past the surface, you miss out on a lot of their heart, their sincerity shining through in their emotional lyrics. These songs give people a sense of community, and that’s palpable throughout the venue this Saturday.
They’re speeding through Europe and the UK for the next two weeks, before making their way to Australia in April, Japan in May and North America in June. Tickets for most of these shows are still available through https://hotmulligan.band/.
GALLERY: Hot Mulligan with Delta Sleep and Bony Macaroni at Melkweg OZ in Amsterdam, Netherlands (February 21, 2026)
