Sparks fly for The Killers’ huge closing set at this year’s Mad Cool 2024

Picking right back up where Måneskin left off with their headliner set last night, the gnarly rock of Mexican outfit The Warning sounds massive as they open Mad Cool’s final day from the main stage, after a last minute cancellation from Tyla sees the trio bumped up the bill. Frontwoman Daniela Villarreal Vélez bears fierce vocals and looks every bit the rock star as she struts across the stage for the already-impressive gathered crowd, while her sisters - Paulina and Alejandra - pummel their way through the swaggering set. Their propulsive offering 'Burnout' - from their recently-released fourth album 'Keep Me Fed' - is a particular highlight.

Moving over to the Region of Madrid stage, Arlo Parks has perhaps underestimated the early evening's heat, as she emerges on stage wearing a jacket. Needless to say, it promptly gets removed after her first song, but the soothing stylings of her musical offerings do provide some relief in the intensity of the sun. Currently nearing the end of her summer run in support of last year’s ’My Soft Machine’, her set is effervescent, with the Londoner declaring her love for performing Spain in between gorgeous cuts ‘Weightless’ and ‘Blades’, while ‘Caroline’ provides an early set highlight. A pro at balancing the delicate but impactful nature of her intimate cuts, her set comes infused with a real sense of joy.

Much like her oversubscribed performance at Glastonbury last month, Avril Lavigne’s appearance in Madrid tonight sees her greeted by a sea of eager fans. Marking the final European show on her greatest hits tour, she’s in good spirits from the off, shaking up a bottle of champagne to spray on the crowd in introduction to ‘Here’s To Never Growing Up’. “Cheers to summer 2024! Cheers to never growing up!” she proclaims, as the bubbly explodes onto the crowd: “Ain’t nothing like a champagne shower!” Unsurprisingly, it’s tracks from her early albums, 2002’s iconic ‘Let Go’ and its 2004 follow-up ‘Under My Skin’ that receive the biggest reactions, with the angsty ‘I’m With You’ and ‘Complicated’ providing huge singalongs. It’s the closing ’Sk8er Boi’, though, that sees the crowd rev up into a real frenzy though, once again proving the power of nostalgia.

By the time that Bring Me The Horizon are due to take to the stage, excitement is at fever pitch across the Villaverde site. It’s a shame, then, that the band’s performance ends up being so delayed: it’s only after twenty minutes of waiting - with various stop-start attempts at launching the visual introduction to their stage show - that the band eventually emerge, looking somewhat crestfallen. What caused the delay remains a mystery through their set (frontman Oli Sykes does apologise, “I’m really sorry for letting you down - thank you for sticking with us, thank you for coming tonight” - but they soon settle into the swing of things, via the explosive one-two of ‘DarkSide’ and ‘MANTRA’. Sadly, their set gets cut short by a handful of tracks but the epic conclusion of ‘Drown’ into ‘Can You Feel My Heart’ is hugely cathartic, but their closing gambit ‘Throne’ sounding utterly ferocious and massive, in equal measure.

If there was ever a perfect band to headline the final night of a festival, it’s The Killers. For over twenty years now, the Las Vegas outfit have honed their skills as entertainers, and - unsurprisingly - tonight they bring out all of the stops for Mad Cool’s final hurrah. Continuing on from their epic UK ‘Rebel Diamonds’ headline run - which boasted not one, not two but six sold out shows at London’s O2 Arena - their show in the Spanish capital doubles as their only European appearance on this run. Needless to say, it’s a feast for the senses, with the Madrid crowd lapping up every moment of their epic greatest hits-skewed set.

Swerving through their back catalogue with a sense of gleeful assuredness, they barely put a foot wrong during their huge headline slot; even their cover of Erasure’s ‘Little Respect’ slots seamlessly alongside ‘Rebel Diamonds’ cut ‘boy’ to dazzling effect. As ever, there are true moments of magic: audience member Daniel being called on stage for a fiery, note-perfect drum-along to ‘For Reasons Unknown’, the bright, instantly-recognisable guitar strummed intro of ‘When We Were Young’, the euphoric chants of ‘All These Things That I’d Done’. Even their encore feels somehow larger than life: the silly bombast of ‘The Man’ dives into the huge-sounding ‘Human’, before a bizarre but brilliant megamix of their biggest hits bursts into life after two different renditions of ‘Mr Brightside’. It’s giddy, it’s ridiculous; it’s the perfect way to close out such an incredible four days.

Catch up on our reports from Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 from Mad Cool Festival now.

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Tags: Arlo Parks, Avril Lavigne, Bring Me The Horizon, The Killers, Mad Cool, Festivals, Reviews, Live Reviews