EVERY SINGLE RECORD: BREAKING BENJAMIN BRING SON, SETLIST AND A SOLD-OUT GLASGOW TO ITS FEET |

LIVE REVIEW | BREAKING BENJAMIN w/ CHEVELLE & RETURN TO DUST | O2 ACADEMY, GLASGOW | 11th July 2026 | by Bryden Churchmichael

The O2 Academy was warm before anyone had even played a note. By the time Breaking Benjamin closed it out, it was something else entirely. Three bands, a sold-out room, July in Glasgow. The heat built the same way the night did, one band at a time.

I’ll be straight: I came in not knowing any of these three bands properly. One or two songs at most between the lot of them. I was there with a camera and a photo pass, working the pit and then making my way back through the crowd to find my friend, which is sometimes the best way to watch a gig. You pay attention to things a fan wouldn’t.

Return to Dust were first, and whatever I expected from an LA opener on someone else’s night, it wasn’t what I got. The guitar landed in your chest before your brain caught up – heavy, physical, immediate. Both members out front were pulling vocal duties, harmonies trading back and forth, and if the Alice in Chains influence is wearing its heart on its sleeve, it works. The playing was precise, tight to the point of occasionally feeling rehearsed, but the crowd work was genuine. The bassist was shirtless and covered in tattoos, swinging his instrument behind his head between songs like it weighed nothing.

This was their first ever show in Glasgow, and they said so, and Glasgow gave something real back. They worked for it anyway, at one point pulling out a cover of OutKast’s ‘Hey Ya!’ that had the whole room grinning. By the time they were done they’d earned it properly.

Return to Dust (Bryden Churchmichael/Northern Exposure)

Chevelle came on and the room shifted. The sound hit differently from the first song – massive, heavier live than I expected from what little I knew of them on record, riffs carrying real weight behind them. Pete Loeffler‘s face in my viewfinder told me everything before I’d processed a note. Jaw set, eyes up, completely locked in. The kind of focus that doesn’t perform for cameras and doesn’t need to.

They were fairly static on stage, no theatrics – the intensity came entirely from the playing. Tight, precise, the Loeffler brothers locked into each other in a way that felt less like performance and more like habit. The classics got the biggest reaction from the crowd, the newer material sitting comfortably alongside them. I left the pit after three songs wanting to go back and actually listen to them properly. That’s not nothing from someone who walked in cold.

Chevelle (Bryden Churchmichael/Northern Exposure)

Outside before doors, Halo t-shirts everywhere. ‘Blow Me Away’ soundtracked Halo 2 back in 2004, and a chunk of this crowd clearly found the band that way and never left. Benjamin Burnley rarely tours outside North America. A fear of flying will do that. Which made a sold-out Glasgow show feel less like a routine tour stop and more like something people had waited a while for.

By the time Breaking Benjamin took the stage the Academy was properly cooking. Behind them, a projected illustration filled the backdrop. Botanical, detailed, shifting colour with the lights as the set moved through red into purple and back again. The drummer sat elevated on a platform high above the rest of the stage, the BB logo on the bass drum the only thing you could clearly make out from the pit at first. The stage was high. The room was full. When they opened with ‘I Will Not Bow’ something locked into place.

Breaking Benjamin (Bryden Churchmichael/Northern Exposure)

Through the set – ‘So Cold’, ‘Breath’, ‘Dear Agony’, ‘Failure’ – the crowd that had been standing relatively still all night sang every word back. Not moshing, not surging. Couples together, parents with kids, hardly a phone in the air. People actually watching. The devotion in that room was quiet and total.

Then the crowd started chanting. “Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben.” Not at Burnley senior, who stood stage left of his son the whole set, engaging with the crowd just enough without ever making it about himself. At his son. The kid who’d been up there beside his dad the whole set, playing and singing, earning it. When the chant landed, the younger Burnley stepped up and said it straight: “I’m singing on every single record, are you guys ready? This song is called ‘Something Wicked’.“ The room went up. One guy crowd surfed straight over the barrier. The rest didn’t move and didn’t need to.

There’s a photo I got of the two of them mid-set. Burnley senior laughing, his son to his left, the drummer elevated behind them both above everything. It looks like exactly what it was. A band that means something to a lot of people, doing it together, in a room that showed up for it.

I had to leave before the end. Trains don’t wait. But I walked out of a sold-out room mid-show and still felt like I’d got what I came for. I came in not knowing these bands. I’ll be listening differently now.

Check out the bands below.

https://www.breakingbenjamin.com

https://getmorechevelle.com

https://www.returntodust.com/

Breaking Benjamin Setlist – O2 Academy, Glasgow, 11th July 2026