The Haunted Youth — 20 November 2026, La (2) d’Apolo (Barcelona)

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Belgium’s Joachim Liebens arrives with “Boys Cry Too”, the second album, where the drums and guitars step in front of the synth layers of the first

The Haunted Youth play La (2) d’Apolo on Friday 20 November. Advance tickets are €25 plus fee and are sold through Fever. Primavera Sound and Sala Apolo are putting it on, and the show is backed by Liveurope, the European scheme that funds venues programming emerging artists from the continent. The venue gives 7pm and leaves both the doors and the start time pending.

The Haunted Youth is the project of Belgium’s Joachim Liebens, and it has two albums. The first, “Dawn of the Freak”, came out on 4 November 2022 on Mayway. The second, “Boys Cry Too”, is from 8 May this year; it opens with “In My Head”, which runs past eight minutes, and closes with “Ghost Girl”. Between the two records the terms have been reversed: the debut was run by synth layers and now the drums and the guitars run it.

“I wanted to show the vulnerable part of men and boys and celebrate it, instead of making it this whole stigma that’s been going on for so long,” Liebens says of the second album.

The venue places them alongside DIIV, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and Yumi Zouma.

They have played Barcelona once: on 18 May 2023 at Upload, on a five-date Spanish run —Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Oviedo and San Sebastián— behind “Dawn of the Freak”. This is their first time at Apolo.

Text by Marçal Bonastre