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Wrap Up Tour at The Wiltern
July 14th, 2026 by Shane Pase
There’s something fitting about The Damned closing out their Final Damnation 50 tour in Los Angeles at The Wiltern.
On November 17th, the band that helped start British punk 50 years ago will take that stage as, quite possibly, their last U.S. show outside of the occasional festival date down the road.
We all love the iconic band behind “New Rose,” widely considered the first UK punk single, and the first British punk act to release an album and tour the United States. That’s not a small footnote — it means whatever happens at The Wiltern is happening because of a chain of shows that stretches all the way back to the band’s earliest days in the U.S., decades before most of the acts influenced by them even existed.
Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, and Rat Scabies are still out there doing it, the same three who were part of the band from the start. Over the years they’ve moved through punk, goth, psychedelia, and pop, often shifting sound from one album to the next instead of settling into one lane.
You can hear that range across the catalog — the raw snap of “Neat Neat Neat” and “Smash It Up” sitting alongside the darker, more atmospheric turn of “Grimly Fiendish,” or the surprise pop detour of their cover of “Eloise,” which became one of their biggest hits despite sounding almost nothing like where they started. Somehow all of it still holds up, whether it’s the frantic early stuff or the moodier material that came later.
The tour is billed as Final Damnation, and the band has said plainly why: given how long they’ve been at this, there’s a real chance it’s the last time they bring a full U.S. run of this size. They don’t seem to be treating it like a lap of honor, though. Recent shows find a band playing loose and having fun, mixing deep cuts in with the songs people actually came to hear — a set that pulls from every stretch of their career rather than just leaning on the singles everyone already knows.
As for the venue: The Wiltern suits them well. It’s got some old theater grandeur to it, which fits a band that’s always leaned into a bit of theater, but it’s not so big that the show turns into a spectacle from a distance. It’s a venue with its own history in this city, which makes it a fitting stop for a band that’s spent 50 years building one of its own.
As the final stop on the tour, it’s a good place for things to land. If this really is the end of The Damned’s U.S. touring story, The Wiltern gives it a fitting setting — an LA room with some history of its own, closing out a night with a band that helped start the whole thing. There’s no telling exactly how the band will choose to close things out, but given their track record, expect a set that covers a lot of ground and doesn’t take the moment too seriously, even if everyone in the room does.
The Flamin’ Groovies open the show, rounding out a bill that feels less like a goodbye and more like one last good night out. Whatever comes after November 17th, it will be a show worth being at.
TO FOLLOW
SID 260715 | TRACI TURNER | EDITOR
