TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 2 Review
- Posted on 04-07-2025
Photo galleries from day 2 at Tons of Rock 2025 can be found here
Photos by Andrea Chirulescu & Jonathan Mazin
Text by Andrea Chirulescu
One new item on the agenda – besides the 4th stage – for this year’s Tons of Rock was the organized Black Metal Bus Sightseeing. Certainly borrowed from Inferno festival, that had this event held in many years and under the guidance of Anders Odden, known for his involvement in the Norwegian black metal scene. I eyed the tickets for this event and went almost through with the purchase, but in retrospective, I am glad I haven’t. I’d love to do this tour and I think it’s an amazing opportunity to connect with other festival goers, listen to some cool stories and do some sightseeing. Hope most of you get to do it. But I don’t think I would have had legs to do this in addition to the festival. Yet, I want to praise the initiative and hope it’s here to stays for the next years!
Starting Thursday, concerts begin at 13:00 on the smaller stages so we arrived rather early to the area, both to get a nice spot in the press tent but also to buy tons of merch – my friend bought tons of pride socks. They seem very good quality and comfy. Once shopping was done, I went to Moonlight stage and watched Bergen up and coming wonder band, Slomosa. The style that they play has been called Tundra rock, but I just find it a good mood banger. I love the flow of their songs and how the show is delivered with a high amount of smiles and confidence. I find them really catchy and I hope to watch them for many years to come.
On my way back to the press tent, I stopped to watch Carcass. While the good old death metal was there and was as evil as ever, having them perform in the sun, and not knowing that Jeff Walker now has short hair (nor having had ever seen him perform in a summery shirt), took my by surprise, visually at least. I think I passed by when they also admitted they shouldn’t have been performing in such sun. That’s one perk of daytime Norwegian performances. The sun is UP for many hours. No matter how you arrange the stages, it’d be in your face for many hours. Well, hope they had sunscreen on.
Speaking of sunscreen, another nice initiative at this festival is that a pharmacy chain is present and has free sunscreen for anyone who needs it. They even offer tattoos that indicate when it’s time to apply sunscreen again. Cool for kids, but it’s really cool for any age to walk around with such a useful tattoo.
Back to the Moonlight tent, away from the sun and catch some songs from the American rockers in Dead Poets Society. Really mellow, cozy rock, some nice looking youngsters and a lot of cheers from the fans. I didn’t become a fan, and I departed in good time to catch few songs with Myles Kennedy. I really like his voice. And his smile. It was a nice continuity from the Dead Poets’ show, still in the mellow tempo but somehow more older fashioned vibes. And still in the scorching sun, so the skin really demanded shade and more sunscreen.
Thursday was the day when Turbonegro got to perform on the main stage. I haven’t figured out if the Turbojeng garden was there only for Thursday or it was something for the whole festival, but you could totally know that this band is gonna perform there by the amount of obvious fans walking around. The band has a reputation for energetic live shows and they are well loved wherever they go. I didn’t get to familiarize myself with their music, despite my many years in Norway. But peeking at the show, from the side of the stage, makes it rather obvious why they’re such a big name on the Norwegian punk rock scene and it’s certainly a good choice for the main stage for the day.
Up next on the smaller Vampire stage we had the surprise of the day, namely the Swedes in Orbit Culture. Oh wow. Sweden’s latest & heaviest export of metal – as it states on their webpage – has blown us away. And they’re certainly main stage material already. The vocalist – who manages to mix the charisma and madness of various big artists – controls the crowd and directs the moshpits and general chaos, all while delivering impecable riffs and growls. No wonder they got signed by Century Media, as the whole quartet is a force of nature on stage. It was really a show to keep talking about for the rest of the day.
The next act on the main stage was certainly a big source of nostalgia for many, but also for wondering how interesting it is to watch passionate youngsters manage to lead more senior band members who are some of the most iconic names on the world punk scene – namely Sex Pistols. Frank Carter hasn’t stepped in the softest of shoes, but heck, he did in style. Or at least one that I found very charming. I saw a lot of people singing along to probably the soundtrack of their youth and I kinda wondered how many remarkable stories can be shared among the tens of thousands present in front of the stage at that hour. The last song surely gave many a new story to tell: Green Day’s vocalist, Billie Joe Armstrong, joined the band on stage and performed ‘Anarchy in the UK’. It was quite the legendary ending.
For those who found their way to the smallest of stages, the Storm stage, at this point of the day they could witness the Swedish thrash metallers Eternal Evil. They had everything it takes for the show to be ‘thrashy’ (but in the right way). Long hair, leather, attitude and volume. Sometimes I wonder why can’t the bands on this small stage maybe perform several days? I have flagged a couple of them each day – like the amazing newcomers, Fixation, who performed the day before – but the energy levels are so depleted with the other three stages. One can only hope that all these bands will have individual events in time and then you get to know them and their shows much better.
Weezer. Yeah, who would have thought I’d ever watch Weezer live. It was a band on TV for so many years. And they still somehow look like they’re on a TV screen, given their dorky clothing style and hard to describe stage attitude. They have fun, but they are…dorky somehow. A lot of their shows relies on the visuals projected in the background, but as I was standing at the side of the stage, those were kinda lost on me and I only heard about them afterwards, from my friends. However, it was really cute to get to sing along to ‘Island in the Sun’ or ‘Say it ain’t so’. As it’s something I’d never think would happen in my lifetime.
And since a big part of the day was a musical time travel, the last concert for Thursday was no exception – Green Day on the main stage. Few of us from the photo ‘group’ – as once more, only few selected photographers got to go into the photopit – gathered our bags and found a place to sit and watch the show, thinking we’d leave if it’s bad. Well, we didn’t leave for quite a bit.
Green Day’s headline set at Tons of Rock 2025 kicked off with the usual pre-show ritual—“Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Blitzkrieg Bop,” and their intro theme blasting through the PA while the crowd built to a frenzy. Right in the middle of it all, a guy in a rabbit suit stumbled onstage and promptly fell off it – faceplanting from a good hight, completely hilarious, and somehow the perfect opener. Thankfully it was cleared up later the guy was perfectly fine. Then the band exploded onto the stage with “American Idiot,” no warm-up needed, just full throttle from the first chord. Billie Joe was sharp and grinning, shouting “takk” and while leading the charge through “Holiday,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Welcome to Paradise,” and deep cuts like “Fuck Off” and “One Eyed Bastard” that hit surprisingly hard. The crowd was loud and locked in, especially during the full-throttle chaos of “Jesus of Suburbia.” They closed with “Good Riddance,” giving everyone one last song before lights out and a fireworks display. Total power set – fun, tight, unfiltered Green Day.
The singing was good, the crowd was having tons of fun and I’m happy I got the chance to witness yet another American well known band live.
