The Howlers: Live at Oporto, October 2024

Touring the UK with their debut album What You’ve Got to Lose to Win It All (2024), The Howlers crashed into Oporto at the start of October bringing their eclectic sound to West Yorkshire. The venue was set for a sold-out show, not a frequent occurrence at the underground favourite, and the energy in the room was finely tuned to a frenzied anticipation.

Oporto seems a fitting venue for this band, who define themselves outside of the constraints of genre. It’s simultaneously home to sweaty hard rock shows, intimate candle-lit acoustic sets, and a lazy, hazy jazz bar feel which reminds me distinctively of the Blues Kitchen chain. The Howlers embody this indefinability in their own music, shifting between the tones of hard rock, cinematic soundtrack, and cowboy ballad as easily as music flows itself, blending one seamlessly into the next. 

The band finally stepped out on the stage to a roar that almost caved in the roof, immediately launching into one of the standout tracks from their new album, ‘How Long’, bringing their thundering classic rock sound to the crowd off the bat. The energetic drum beats and deafening electric solo were the standout players of the song, and these slipped straight away into the metal-esque rumbling of ‘Lady Luck’. They performed the rest of the album to the same standard, Adam Young’s distinctive voice soaring above the instruments and lending the band its western desert rock tone, gearing up the crowd for them to go wild at the release of Guus ter Braak’s solos. Other highlights include the slowing of the set for ‘Cowboys Don’t Cry’, a more tender and ballad-like track on a roster otherwise inspired by a big soundtrack. ‘El Dorado’, as their most popular song on streaming services, was the perfect track to close out with, Young’s voice and the audience’s mixing together to scale the huge tracts in the instruments’ wake.

The night was a total success for the London-based trio who are well on their way to skyrocketing to the top of the independent artist ladder. They begin the European leg of their tour in March, covering France, the Netherlands, and Italy to name a few, in an effort to bring the success of their sound to Europe.

Words by Maddie Nash