"Did you come to dance," asked Simon Le Bon, a fallen angel in white bondage surrounded by a band of zombie punks and ghostly Marie Antoinettes, "or did you come to die?" A somewhat cake-or-death question. The witches, she-devils and general nosferati of the Co-Op Live arena in Manchester clearly came for their annual dose of Beelzebub boogie.
Hungry like the ... werewolf? You were in the right place. Since throwing the New Romantic Halloween party to end them all in Las Vegas in 2022 -- not so much wild as lost boys for the night -- Duran Duran have had a bloodlust for the role of most devilish band in pop. In 2023 they dipped their biggest songs into the synth-goth cauldron and covered some of Satan's best noir-pop and indie rock tunes on the Halloween-themed Danse Macabre album, and each All Hallow's Eve since they're staged these one-off pop heath-meets across the globe. This year they put the hits up Manchester, psychically summoning 23,000 parent-pop innocents away from the typical Halloween pursuits of Farage cosplay and entry-level extortion.