The Bedford four-piece spent a decade turning oddball indie-rock into something much heavier, and their fifth album has put them back on the road for fifteen mostly sold-out British nights this autumn.

Bedford Modern, a broken wrist and a name that stuck

Don Broco formed in Bedford in 2008, but the members had been playing together long before that. Rob Damiani, Simon Delaney, Matt Donnelly and Tom Doyle attended Bedford Modern School and put on their first gigs there; it was only after they had been through Nottingham University that they committed to the band as a job rather than a hobby. The name came from a false start — the group had settled on Don Loco until Delaney broke his wrist in a football accident, and Don Broco replaced it.

The line-up has never changed. Damiani sings and handles electronics, Delaney plays guitar, Doyle plays bass and programming, and Donnelly drums while taking a substantial share of the vocals, an arrangement that shapes how the band sound on stage as much as on record.

The first album, Priorities, appeared on 25 August 2012 and reached number 25 in the UK, charting for a single week. Their only Official Singles Chart entry to date followed in October 2013, when You Wanna Know peaked at number 39. Nothing about the early years suggested a band that would eventually be handed an arena-sized stage on a stadium bill.

Four albums to a number one that arrived on vinyl

Automatic, released on 20 August 2015, took them to number 6 and four weeks on the albums chart. Technology followed on 15 February 2018 and reached number 5. Across that period the band moved through Sony and Epic and then SharpTone, and built a following that was measured in sold-out rooms rather than radio play.

Amazing Things came out on 4 November 2021, but the number one did not arrive until February 2022, when the delayed physical copies landed. Ninety-eight per cent of the sales that put it at the top of the Official Albums Chart were physical — a first chart-topper won on vinyl and CD rather than streaming. In March 2022 the band played the Royal Albert Hall with orchestral accompaniment for Teenage Cancer Trust, about as far from the school-hall circuit as it is possible to travel.

That record also fixed a problem. Don Broco had spent years being defined by their funniest songs, and Amazing Things gave them a bigger, less jokey frame to work in.

Fearless, Dan Lancaster and a darker fifth record

The band signed to Fearless Records in July 2025 and made Nightmare Tripping with producer Dan Lancaster, recording in stages between 2024 and 2026 across several studios — among them Chris Wolstenholme's home set-up and, at one point, a room in the Ibis hotel in Adelaide. The album was released on 27 March 2026.

It is a heavier, more industrial record than anything before it, with Damiani leaning into harsher vocals rather than treating them as an occasional effect. The title track is a collaboration with Chad Kroeger and Ryan Peake of Nickelback. True Believers, which features Sam Carter of Architects, addresses the distance between ordinary British patriotism and violent English nationalism. Cellophane, Hype Man, Disappear and Euphoria went out as singles ahead of release.

Nightmare Tripping entered the UK albums chart at number 7 on 9 April 2026 and topped the UK Rock & Metal chart — the band's fifth consecutive number one in that category. Reviews split along a predictable line. Kerrang! gave it four out of five, Wall of Sound 8.5 out of 10, and Sputnikmusic 2.7 out of 5, calling it disjointed. Punktastic singled out True Believers as the standout by some distance and praised the claustrophobic Cellophane and the bagpipe sample in Disappear, but warned that the band now risk sounding like everyone else at the same point on a festival bill, with no route back to their old antics.

Where they stand in September 2026

The current cycle began before the album did. In December 2025 Don Broco played two nights at the Warehouse inside Aviva Studios in Manchester, on 6 and 7 December, with YONAKA, State Champs and Magnolia Park opening and Cellophane as the only new material most of the room knew.

The summer was spent in Europe. They played the Orbit stage at Rock am Ring on 5 June 2026, a ten-song set opening with Pretty and closing on Hype Man, then dropped into the Melkweg in Amsterdam on 9 June for a club show on a festival off-day. In July they opened for Biffy Clyro at Finsbury Park on a bill that also carried Nothing But Thieves. On 9 July they took the 2000 Trees main stage at Upcote Farm, added to the line-up six days earlier as a replacement for Alkaline Trio after Matt Skiba's health problems.

The autumn run is the first proper test of the new album at home. Fifteen UK dates open at the Colosseum in Watford on 27 September and finish at the Prospect Building in Bristol on 14 October, taking in Lincoln, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Cambridge, Birmingham, Portsmouth, Norwich, Folkestone, London's Outernet Live and Leeds. Lincoln, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Norwich, London and Bristol have sold out. Unpeople and Ando San open throughout.

What the set looks like now

The shape of the show settled quickly once the album was out. At 2000 Trees in July the band played seventeen songs: Cellophane first, then a run that mixed Nightmare Tripping, Somersaults, Disappear, Euphoria and True Believers with Manchester Super Reds No.1 Fan, Uber, Fingernails and Bruce Willis, before an encore of Everybody, T-Shirt Song and Hype Man. Festival sets run shorter — the Rock am Ring bill allowed ten songs — and setlist.fm puts their average show at around an hour, which the headline dates should comfortably exceed.

Reviewers of the summer shows kept returning to the same two things: the pace, described at the Melkweg as rapid-fire and neck-breaking, and Donnelly singing at full strength while holding down a complicated drum part. Damiani works the front of the stage and the barrier — at Amsterdam the tour manager spent the night wrangling the microphone cable — and the crowd response is physical rather than polite, with circle pits running almost continuously and the newer songs sung back as readily as the old ones.

There are still small pieces of theatre. True Believers gets a deliberate pause mid-song for a hydration break; at the Melkweg the opening act, Slay Squad, came back out to perform it with them. T-Shirt Song does what it has always done to a room.

The show, now

A Don Broco headline show in 2026 runs longer than the hour their festival sets average and follows the template set at 2000 Trees in July: seventeen songs, Cellophane as the opener, a middle stretch that alternates Nightmare Tripping material — the title track, Somersaults, Disappear, Euphoria, True Believers — with Manchester Super Reds No.1 Fan, Uber, Fingernails and Bruce Willis, and an encore of Everybody, T-Shirt Song and Hype Man. The staging is conventional and the band do the work instead: Damiani spends most of it at the barrier, Donnelly sings a full lead vocal from behind the kit, and the pace was described after the Melkweg show in Amsterdam on 9 June as rapid-fire and neck-breaking, with the pit in constant motion and fans singing the new songs back word for word. True Believers carries a scripted pause mid-song for a drink; in Amsterdam the opening band joined them for it. On the autumn UK run, Unpeople and Ando San open every night, and seven of the fifteen dates — Lincoln, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Norwich, London's Outernet Live and Bristol — have already sold out.

Researched from en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · officialcharts.com · nme.com · myticket.co.uk · factoryinternational.org · punktastic.com · setlist.fm

Pictures

Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited

Stefan Brending (2eight) · CC BY-SA 4.0
Andreas Lawen, Fotandi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Foto: Andreas Lawen, Fotandi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Wünderbrot · CC BY-SA 4.0
Foto: Andreas Lawen, Fotandi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Foto: Andreas Lawen, Fotandi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Foto: Andreas Lawen, Fotandi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Foto: Andreas Lawen, Fotandi · CC BY-SA 4.0