The Living Tombstone at Depot, Cardiff: What to Wear

A gig on a Wednesday asks something different of you. There's no long build-up and no Saturday to write off afterwards. You finish work or your shift, you get across town, you lose two hours to songs you first heard through a laptop speaker, and then you're back out on Dumballs Road at eleven doing the maths on tomorrow morning.

The Living Tombstone bring the Multiplayer Tour to Depot on Wednesday 19 August, and Cardiff gets the first of their five UK dates before they move on to Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and London. Weebl is listed as support, which is a very funny piece of billing: the man behind Badger Badger Badger opening for the band NME called the internet's biggest gaming band.

Depot has it down as 7pm to 11pm, and it's sold out. Resale tickets exist and they're silly (face value was around £35, and I've seen listings north of £160), so if you're still hunting, hunt carefully.

The room, and why it changes the outfit

Depot is a warehouse on Curran Road, off Dumballs Road, about ten minutes' walk from Cardiff Central. Unit 8, CF10 5DF. It holds 2,100 people and it's indoors, which sounds like a small detail and is actually the whole brief.

Everything I've written about gigs in this city lately has been about the Castle: grass underfoot, sun cream, a jacket for when the temperature drops at nine. None of that applies here. This is a hard floor, a low ceiling, and a room that'll be warm before the support act finishes and properly hot by the time the drops land. August doesn't help.

So, one layer on your top half rather than three. Something you can stand up in for four hours. Nothing you'd be upset about sweating in, and nothing you have to keep track of, because you'll be in a crowd with no seat to shove a bag under and no promise of anywhere to leave a coat. Check Depot's own listing for their bag policy before you travel rather than turning up hopeful.

How much of a fan you dress as is entirely your call

This is the bit that makes a Living Tombstone crowd different from a normal gig crowd. The songs come out of games (Five Nights at Freddy's, Undertale, Murder Drones) and the fandoms around those games are cosplay fandoms. So the floor will run the full distance, from people in animatronic builds they've been working on since June to people in a plain black tee who just really like the music.

Both are correct. The band are loud about their shows being a safe and accepting space, and the crowd tends to hold that line, so nobody's scoring your commitment on the door.

If you want to land somewhere in the middle, which is where most people land, the move is fandom detail on ordinary clothes. Enamel pins clustered on a bag strap. A graphic tee that means something to about forty people in the room and nothing at all to anyone else. Colour in your hair clips or your laces rather than head to toe. It reads as belonging without committing you to carrying a headpiece through Cardiff Central at half eleven.

If you are going full cosplay, the two things to design around are heat and sightlines. Anything with a mask will be unbearable by song four, and anything tall behind you makes you unpopular fast. Build it so it comes apart.

Shop the outfit

Four ways to put a top half and a bottom half together for a hot room. The tees tab is where the fandom detail lives; the rest is just clothes that survive four hours upright.

Cargos are the sensible pick and I'm not being sarcastic about it. Pockets mean you can travel without a bag at all, which solves the biggest problem of the night before it starts. A denim mini or shorts with a tee does the same job if you run warm, though you give up the pockets to do it.

The layer underneath, for when the room turns

A vest or cami under the tee sounds like overthinking until the second half, when the tee comes off, gets knotted round a strap, and you're glad you thought about it. Jersey or cotton. Nothing clingy or synthetic that'll hold onto the heat.

Shoes: four hours standing on concrete

No grass, no give, nowhere to sit down. A flat lace-up trainer you've already broken in is the entire answer, and a leather or canvas upper copes with being trodden on better than mesh does. Save the platforms. You'll feel every one of those four hours in your arches, and you won't see any more of the stage than you would have anyway.

What to carry, and how

Small, and worn across the body rather than hanging off one shoulder, because a bag that swings is a bag you'll spend the night rescuing. Nylon or canvas that you don't mind getting squashed, over anything structured or precious. A strap is also the best surface you own for pins, if that's your thing.

The walk back into town

You come out at eleven onto an industrial estate and walk back up Dumballs Road towards Central. It's about ten minutes and perfectly fine, but you'll be doing it soaked through after four hours in a hot room. An August night here isn't cold; it's just a lot colder than the inside of that warehouse. Take something light and zip-through that you can tie round your waist all evening and put on at the door.

The short version

Graphic tee, cargos or a denim mini, flat trainers you trust, a small crossbody, and a light jacket for the walk back. Fandom detail wherever you want it, and no obligation in either direction. The worst outfit in the room will be the one somebody spends the whole gig managing.

If Wednesday isn't yours, the same formula covers the rest of Depot's indoor calendar, because the room sets these rules rather than the band. Stock and prices move quickly on everything here, so if something works, don't leave it sitting in a tab until Tuesday.