Live at Spark Arena
25 September 2026
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
The Kiwi hard-rock juggernauts bring the mosh pit, the mayhem and a bass-flinging finale.
There was something wonderfully appropriate about walking into Spark Arena and finding the place packed with sparkies, builders, tradies and the wider tribe of New Zealand rock fans. This was never going to be a room full of people worried about whether their shoes matched their shirt. This was a rock show and Auckland had turned up ready for some noise.
If Villainy had spent their opening set warming up the room, Devilskin walked onto the Spark Arena stage as though somebody had just thrown a lit match into a petrol station.
From the opening note, there was no hesitation.
No warming up.
No gently easing the audience into the set.
Devilskin hit the stage at full force.
Jennie Skulander's voice was already fully fired up, bassist Paul Martin was locked in, Nail was ripping into the guitars and drummer Nic Martin was pounding the kit with the kind of conviction that suggests subtlety wasn't particularly high on the agenda.
And why would it be?
This is Devilskin.
The Hamilton quartet have been doing this for 15 years, building a reputation as one of Aotearoa's most formidable live rock bands. Their breakthrough debut We Rise eventually went double platinum, while 2016's Be Like the River went straight to No. 1 in New Zealand, earned Gold certification and won the band the Aotearoa Music Award for Best Rock Artist.
They've also spent years sharing stages with some serious international firepower including Mötley Crüe, Disturbed, Halestorm, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, Airbourne and Coheed and Cambria among them.
But tonight wasn't about history.
It was about what happened when four experienced rock musicians walked onto a big Auckland stage and decided to flatten it.
And flatten it they did.
Skulander had the audience involved almost immediately, commanding people to throw their hands into the air before launching herself into the next song with a high scissor kick.
The rest of the band responded in kind, throwing themselves into those exaggerated rock poses that have been part of the heavy-rock visual vocabulary since somebody first plugged a Marshall stack into the wall and decided subtlety was overrated.
Within minutes, Devilskin had achieved something Villainy hadn't:
the first genuine mosh pit of the night.
And there was no mistaking who was responsible.
Jennie Skulander is one hell of a frontwoman.
She doesn't simply stand at the microphone and sing songs. She physically attacks the stage.
She prowls it.
She owns it.
She gets down to the audience.
She throws herself around.
And that creates a problem, although not one caused by the singer.
The lighting.
Once again, Spark Arena demonstrated one of the great mysteries of modern concert production: why do we have increasingly sophisticated lighting rigs that seem determined not to actually light the singer?
There was plenty of backlighting, plenty of haze and plenty of atmospheric illumination.
What there wasn't enough of was front light.
And when Skulander moved to the far edges of the stage and posed towards the front rows, she frequently disappeared completely into silhouette.
You could hear her.
You knew she was there.
But you couldn't bloody see her.
For a frontwoman whose entire performance is based around movement, facial expression and physical connection with the audience, that's a fairly significant production own-goal.
Give Jennie some light.
She's earned it.
Musically, Devilskin were all over the place and I mean that as a compliment.
At one point they went from blues-rock swagger into something approaching death-metal territory, demonstrating just how broad their musical vocabulary has become.
Then came “Start a Revolution.”
The song built and built until, halfway through, everything suddenly ground to a halt.
And Jennie dropped.
Not a graceful rock-star crouch.
Not a carefully choreographed kneel.
She collapsed to the floor like a rag doll, slumping fully into the splits.
Then she just sat there.
Motionless.
For several seconds.
The audience waited.
Then the music kicked back in and Skulander was back in the fight.
It's precisely the sort of theatrical moment that separates watching a band from experiencing one.
And Devilskin clearly understand that distinction.
The band are currently celebrating a decade of Be Like the River, with their 2026 anniversary tour built around performing the album in full across Aotearoa. The record remains one of the defining releases of their career, having debuted at No. 1 and cemented their reputation as a major live act.
Their Spark Arena appearance was a slightly different proposition, squeezed into the multi-band bill alongside Villainy, The Boondocks and headliners The Living End.
And Devilskin didn't behave like a support act.
They behaved like a headliner who had been temporarily lent somebody else's stage.
Then came “Barracuda.”
And, because this is live music and live music has an almost pathological desire to remind performers who's actually in charge, the guitar decided to pack it in.
Except nobody panicked.
The guitar was swapped with such efficiency that barely a note was lost.
That's the sort of thing you only really appreciate if you've spent enough time around live shows to understand how quickly a technical problem can turn into a five-minute black hole.
Here, it was almost invisible.
Problem.
Swap.
Back to business.
That's professionalism.
By the time Devilskin reached their final number, the relationship between band and audience was firmly established.
But Jennie had one more trick.
She headed towards the side-stage area where the other support acts were watching and turned the performance directly towards them.
Suddenly, those musicians who had spent the afternoon preparing their own sets were getting their own private Devilskin concert.
Skulander sang directly to them, effectively bringing the show backstage without ever leaving the stage.
It was a lovely moment because it demonstrated something that can get lost in the machinery of a major arena production:
musicians watching musicians.
They know what they're seeing.
They know how difficult it is.
And they know when someone is absolutely nailing it.
Then came the finale.
Paul Martin finished by launching his bass guitar high into the air and throwing it across the stage.
One of the road crew was waiting.
The bass came down.
Catch.
Perfect.
That's how you finish a rock show.
No gentle fade.
No polite goodbye.
Just throw the bloody bass.
Devilskin's performance was everything their reputation suggests it should be: loud, physical, unpredictable, technically assured and completely committed.
There were production issues, particularly the lighting, but none of them seemed capable of slowing this band down.
Jennie Skulander remains an extraordinary live presence, while Paul Martin, Nic Martin and Nail provide the muscular foundation that allows her to go completely feral at the front.
After 15 years, countless tours, major festival appearances and stages shared with some of the biggest names in hard rock, Devilskin don't look like a band simply protecting their legacy.
They look like a band still determined to add to it.
And judging by the first mosh pit of the night, the Auckland audience was more than happy to help.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photography by Paul Marshall
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