TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 1 Review
- Posted on 03-07-2025
Full photo galleries can be found at the link below.
Photos: Andrea Chirulescu/Jonathan Mazin
Text: Andrea Chirulescu & Jonathan Mazin
Having a big, world class festival in your town is something one kinda gets used to by now and I feel like somehow the days and weeks leading up to it have become more exciting with each year. Or maybe just the daily life is different, but either way, it was nice to finally reach the starting point of Tons of Rock 2025, held in Oslo, Norway, on the beautiful area called Ekebergsletta, an area surrounded by houses and from which you can have some lovely walks to viewpoints and even to the city center. The walk from the city center to the festival is a bit of a challenge – being all uphill – but many braved it. Anyway, it’s quite an iconic festival location altogether and so far it has allowed to festival to slowly grow each year. In 2025, ToR managed to even add a fourth stage that now also hosts concert and not just small ‘non musical’ events (mainly talks and panels). There were also more food stalls and it overall felt bigger. Not by much, but enough to score some extra steps on the daily counters.
For a few years now, the festival has been extended to being on Wednesday and last until Saturday, making it a 4 days fest. 4 days, 4 scenes, 4 artists on the two main stage – and more on the two smaller tent stages – this is already bordering the ‘too much’ of the big festivals with many years of history. I know it’s hard to make booking that would 100% fit every participant’s taste, so then you try to mix it enough so that everyone has something to see throughout the day, thus the convenience of a big number of bands to choose from. Yet, I dread the idea of having to constantly make choices and compromises at festivals and I hope Tons won’t expand more than it has already done. It’s tiresome to try to cover as many bands as possible, to squeeze in food breaks, rest breaks, run from the sun breaks, meet friends and spend more than ‘hi/bye’ time with them and so on. And the more bands you get in the lineup, the less value for money you get back, in my opinion. Unless you have figured out cloning and can be at 3 stages at once. But, first world problems at the end of the day.
The outline of the festival area resembled previous year’s, with some more food stalls placed next to the Moonlight stage, or well, between the two tent stages. And a LOT more sitting tables close to the entrance. Plus a pile of cars parked right as you enter but I failed to see what that was about. Some merch tents were grouped differently and to my surprise I stumbled upon a fresh fruits and veggies tent. With freshly pressed juice (and COLD at the same time). The health value is nulled out by the fact that the second half of the tent is a sweets shop. Yet, the overpriced fruit box with cold pineapple bits sent me to a blissful half an hour. More nom-noms like this please!
The transport to the festival was also arranged via shuttlebuses from the city center – as the area didn’t allows for any non festival related traffic – and this year that worked waaaay better than previous years, on all days. Short queues anytime we left to and from the area, but there were some peak hours for those who arrived after normal working hours on Wednesday and Thursday. Yet, not too bad. As the festival overlapped with few other events in the weekend, the shuttle buses dropped people at various stops around the city centers and left some confused faces who wondered if they’re still in Oslo or caused a bit of chaos on a big road, as the stairs to go under the road were not the most obvious. I think it all went well in the end.
As previous years, the Norwegian POST had its own big tent, from which you could mail your shoppings or you could store them for the day. Really really convenient service at a festival Smart idea! Oh and the festival merch has its own area, next to the bands merch. You can go in, try, check the wide variety of stuff that they sell. I think it’s really cool that they expanded from just black tshirts with band logos. There’s so much to be bought there, in so many colors! Nice!
While small bits of some of the concerts – mainly the first song, as it’s normal – had less pleasant sound than expected, I found the overall sound quality rather good, but with an oddity. The more to the side of the stage you went, the quieter it got. I am not a connoisseur of sound systems and speakers orientation, but as I found myself often to the side of the stages because of the photopit access, I found it so that the concert was rather quiet there. But if I was moving towards the stage and into the crowd, it was getting louder all of a sudden. Or it’s maybe just my hearing getting old.
Tons of rock has become a tons of crowdsurfing type of festival. Makes for good photos and really happy people. There’s plenty of happy post-crowdsurfing faces captured especially on the last day. But I still have mixed feelings about this ‘sport’, because, as a photographer, I get to see the chaos created in front of the stage where people who spent hours waiting for their favorite artist to start only get to watch the bellies of the security folk who pick up crowdsurfers. Or have to fight themselves to not get hit in the head. I heard some festival started banning crowdsurfing and for the sake of these people, I can agree with this measure. Not sure how else to allow both parties to enjoy what they want to do at a concert. Regarding security, the festival has expanded the photopits with a little raised platform just behind the barriers. This way, security could always be taller and have an easier way fetching people from the air and also offering eachother support. You literally need someone to hold your back while you lift and put down people at a rate of 5 per minute. They did quite a good job. And I believe most of the employees of the security company have gathered festival experience by now. We see familiar faces, they all sem to have fun – even during the hard working moments – and there’s a lot of smiling and consideration. Instead of reacting with panic at the manifestations of metal crowd, there’s more relaxation, communication and a lot of the time is spent asking people in front rows if they want some water. That is surely a good way for the security to ensure people’s well being when the sun is boiling over your head.
Now, for the bands that performed during day one.
As ALWAYS – since the first edition – Tons of Rock is being opened by Black Debbath and their heavy non PC rock. I have big respect for what these guys are doing, because it can’t be easy to be the opening band year after year and be under the pressure of making sure people come to your show and not just go like ‘I’ve seen that before’. We have certainly heard the songs before. But the show is different every year. Despite it having the same microphones and clothes – hopefully they go through some laundry process each year – but the show factor changes. And this year we had a stage filled by a super cool choir and a very energetic director. The sounds sounded really amazing with choir pieces added to them and some of the choir members helped delivering important political messages. Innocent ones, but important. Oh, and speaking of political. The stage was actually opened by a political figure – the ex prime minister and Nato secretary and current minister of finances in Norway, Jens Stoltenberg. He held a short speech after the festival headmasters opened the day. I actually had the feeling that the politician was the most ‘stressed’ in front of the metalheads. Glad the speech wasn’t used for any agenda, but only to share some concert memories and insist on people being supportive to eachother and having a good time.
Alestorm were next on Vampire stage. I’ve watched this band at other events where the whole crowd was having inflatable pirate swords and hats and danced wildly all throughout the show. The Oslo crowd was cool to watch, but was less intense than at other shows. Yes, it’s always cool to watch gianormous ducks on stage and four guys singing about partying and beering and such. All while the ducks stare. I didn’t stay to the end to see if they got released over the crowd. Hope they had a good fate.
A quick stroll around the festival area to locate some food – relatively decent curry at the Thai food tent – and then a stop by the main stage to check out Electric Callboy. A side note – this year Eternal Terror had two people with media accreditation and we then took turns photographing some bands. Which helped with reduced back and feet pain at the end of the day, but the madness to plan and meet around to arrange who does what, made it also another kind of stress and it doesn’t mean we have the physical capacity to go to ALL shows. That’d be quite difficult to attend. Electric Callboy brought the party early at Tons of Rock 2025, turning their 16:00 set into a chaotic, high-energy explosion of sound, color, and pyro. Opening with their iconic “Elevator Operator,” they immediately had the crowd bouncing, blurring the line between metal show and full-on rave. Everything hit hard—from the ridiculous fun of “Everytime We Touch” to the unstoppable momentum of “Hypa Hypa”—all backed by relentless pyro, confetti, and perfectly timed lighting that made even broad daylight feel like a festival finale. By the time they closed with “We Got the Moves,” it was pure celebration—sweaty, loud, and absolutely unhinged. Easily one of the most fun and memorable sets of the day.
Yet, after passing through the happy crowd, I mingled a bit with the ‘serious’ crowd that was watching the Swedish doom legends Candlemass inside the Moonlight stage tent. A complete contrast of tempos, yet, one could hear the class and the years of history delivered by the Swedes. There was little time to get into the ‘slow’ mood of the tent as one passed by the Lorna Shore concert on the Vampire stage. Wow, those guys ingested all the batteries backstage and then went on stage. They have a lot of charisma and deliver an interesting symphonic oriented core style. Heated up by some pyro effects here and there. Yet, the main heat comes from the musicians, led by the talented Ramos, whose presence is captivating. Wish I didn’t start to have heavy feet already so early in the day, but I left before the end and sat down for a bit, preparing to finally watch Dream Theater live. I have ‘seen’ them before, but not watched them, as I didn’t know who nor what they did maaaany years ago. They were confusing back then. Ever since, I learned to recognise their impressive prog metal songs and it’s difficult to put in words how fascinating it is to try to understand how they manage to synchronize themselves like that on stage and perform those amazing compositions. With some highs and lows on the vocal part, and having had watched the show together with friends and friends of friends who were big fans and got to sing along half of the time, I can only smile now reminiscing that this was a really beautiful show. Not a spectacular one, but beautiful and filled with skill-wise wow moments.
I had to miss Whitechapel’s performance, so I hope to get a chance at seeing them another time. I also skipped Powerwolf’s set, which got a lot of good verbal review from those whom I spoke with afterwards. But I really wanted to watch Old Man’s Child’s performance. The band decided to perform live again after 25 years of stage absence. The first appearance took place few weeks before at Sweden Rock, so that probably gave the musician the chance to fix any glitches, should there have been any. Given that everyone on stage is so experienced with other bands and projects, it was really impressive to watch them deliver such intense black metal with confidence and the right attitude. Hoest never fails as frontman, he’ll always be on point with his vocal duty. And I know Galder always looks excited to be on stage, but this being his ‘old child’, he surely enjoyed the comeback and you could hear it in every note he played. And the reason I had to skip a band in order to watch another one is that swimming through the crowd becomes really difficult towards the end of the day, so this is compromise time.
The headliner for the first day was MUSE, a band that the festival mentioned they tried to get to play for quite a while now. As I do dig some of their songs, I was happy too at the chance of watching them live. Not all photographers were allowed to take photos, so I could actually enjoy from song 1. As they are only a 3 piece band, it’s not so easy for them to fill the big stages, yet, the massive hanging lights/monitors that kinds filled all the space up to the ceiling of the stage, made the whole thing so impressive to watch. I know they like their distortions, yet I think it sounded really odd at the beginning. Or it might have been me standing at the wrong angle. It was super packed though, so I think a lot of people appreciated them as headliners. The band did a good job at going through their vast discography and I think it must have been wild with singalongs and cheering when they ended with Uprising and Knights of Cydonia. My friend and I were long gone by then, to avoid the bus chaos and to rest our tired feet. 3 more days to go!
