2025 LIVE RECAP: Face It Tegan @ District

As we head into the final months of 2025, we're looking back on some of our favourite live moments from the year...

Our country is headed towards a recession, meaning only one thing, a lack of garages for kids to play music in. Thankfully, in September, Liverpool's District gave all of those with smudged eyeliner and dyed hair a place to scream into a hazy mess of guitars.

Opening the night was Pain Program, who came hurtling in like a murder of crows. They are heavy, and layered, and angry and dissonant, like the crashing of some unknown creature in the undergrowth. It is deeply unsettling, and yet hugely thrilling, a brilliant introduction to the evening. 

Monroe come charging in after them in a flurry of red and blue lights, flashing like sirens; you forget you aren’t in an early 2000s basement and expect the noise complaints any minute. They fling themselves from distorted screams to a strained yearning, reminiscent of Love Lost But Not Forgotten, plunging themselves into a murky darkness. 

Joining them at this depth is Rozemary, shrouded in black and reverb and pounding basslines. They’re aggressively powerful, with crushing baselines and piercing vocals that occasionally soften, pulling back like waves before a tsunami. They’re unashamedly DIY, raw and unpolished, as patchwork as their clothing, fitting perfectly into the jumble of bands that grace the stage. 

Rounding off the night is Face It Tegan, the older siblings of this basement gig if you will. And they are glorious, draped in smoke and completely wired, beginning with shouts of “Free Palestine” before breaking into their set. There is something softer about them, a little wounded, a little fragile, and they reverberate like a Deftones tune. 

Between the almost claustrophobic guitars and ringing drum beats is a haunting voice, glowing through the wall of sound like a full moon through a cracked window. It tells of heartbreak, and loneliness, and self discovery, both vulnerable and vast. This strange duality hovers over the set, an unsettling static that reverberates around the building. 

When the bands leave the building, there is little trace left of the gig, few have music out, even fewer seem to have proof of their existence, and the night is left with only a bizarre emptiness. All that’s left is kids hoping that they’ll meet again, and their mothers wondering where they went.