TOMORROW X TOGETHER often refer to themselves as the rock stars of K-pop. Tonight at The O2, they spend nearly three hours trying to prove it.
It’s the group’s first ever performance in the UK – which considering how many K-pop groups have made it over here in recent years, and that TXT are signed to HYBE, aka Korea’s biggest entertainment company, seems utterly baffling that it hasn’t happened sooner – and as such, is an expectedly elaborate affair. The tour, titled ‘ACT : PROMISE’, is technically in support of their most recent EP, ‘The Star Chapter: Sanctuary’, a release anchored by its messaging of finally meeting someone you love; a very sweet and apt set of songs to bring to your first UK audience.
After opening with ‘Sanctuary’’s lead single ‘Over The Moon’, that sweetness is quickly abandoned for TXT’s rockier sound, which becomes the mainstay for most of the show. If their speeches throughout are anything to go by – the boys take several opportunities to talk about how long they’ve wanted to perform here, being that England is the home of many iconic rock bands they’re fans of – it’s in this genre where their hearts lie, and the performance is all the better for it. The drama of last year’s ’Deja Vu’ is amped up with extra guitars, while ‘0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)’, taken from their second album ‘The Chaos Chapter: Freeze’ and the moment they really leaned into heavier soundscapes, soars as an arena-ready anthem.
Since their debut in 2019, the five piece have released three albums and seven EPs telling their coming-of-age story with a fantastical edge, so what better backdrop for their early-twenties frustrations than good old pop punk? It’s in these moments that TOMORROW X TOGETHER show themselves to be a different kind of K-pop group. ‘LO$ER=LOVER’ is an obvious highlight, with it’s emo pop melodrama and stadium singalong quality; ‘Thursday’s Child Has Far To Go’ and ‘Quarter Life’ (the latter only performed by three of the members, BEOMGYU, TAEHYUN, and HUENINGKAI) have similar lighters-up value.
Elsewhere, ‘Growing Pain’ is nearly nu metal with its heavy guitars and belting vocals, presented on stage with the boys taking baseball bats to the set. It might be a bit comic rebellion, but some moments at this show are genuinely hardcore, like baby of the group HUENINGKAI doing a drum solo at the start of ‘Good Boy Gone Bad’, and eldest YEONJUN (a charisma machine) accidentally busting his own lip with the mic during his solo track ‘GGUM’, leaving a trickle of red blood down his chin when he jumps off stage and takes to the barricade.
They’ve grown up in other ways too, not just on record. There is, of course, a sexy section. Leader SOOBIN and YEONJUN perform ‘The Killa (I Belong To You)’, the sultry afrobeats style track, with enough hip grinding and flashes of abs that it may as well be Magic Mike for this audience, screams only intensifying when the other three come back for the similarly addictive ‘Tinnitus (Wanna be a rock)’. Shortly after, TAEHYUN does a solo dance intro to the groovy R&B number ‘Danger’, keeping the heat high.
Ballads are kept to a minimum (thankfully), with the exception of the pessimistic and apologetic ‘Anti-Romantic’, but the omission of most of their early big singles – notably debut ‘CROWN’, and subsequent lead singles ‘9 and Three Quarters’, ‘Can’t You See Me?’ and ‘Blue Hour’ – leaves a bit of a hit-shaped hole in the set. With a clear preference for the serious stuff, maybe they’ve just outgrown some of that teen angst. Still, TXT end the set on a very positive note with ‘I’ll See You There Tomorrow’, a track that thrives in London thanks to its nods to British dance music, hopefully signalling that it won’t be another six years before we see them again.
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