TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 3

Full photo galleries from Day 3:

TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 3

Photos by Andrea Chirulescu and Jonathan Mazin

Text by Andrea Chirulescu and Jonathan Mazin

One nice thing with this year’s Tons of Rock edition was that it didn’t really have any precipitation. Now I can’t really recall on which day some people brought a poncho with them and some wore it at the end of the day, but any heavy rain happened only at night or morning. So, even if the sun was relatively strong, the temperatures were never as crazy as at the fests in more Southern regions – basically the rest of Europe. So that’s always a nice thing, since rain makes outfits and photo equipment a rather complicated affair. On the other hand, the bright Norwegian sun can surely pose some challenges for the performing artists. They spend months preparing their stage costumes and shows and the right facepaint, but all that can surely become a burden when you have to deliver everything while staring at the strong sun.

Thursday, the first band who had the honor of facing the hot sun and the big amount of people – always nice to see people coming in big numbers to support good acts – were Norwegian metallers Djerv led by their very charismatic singer, Agnete Kjølsrud. She’s always making changes to her appearance this year she started with an interesting costume that made her look like she’d have wings when she’d stretch her arms, but also made for dramatic poses if she’s squat and cover herself. After a couple of songs, she switched to a pianist kind of long tail coat. All outfits were black, and while her bandmates got to be in tshirts and wear sunglasses, Agnete pulled off a very dramatic and dark show, despite the crazy light. She has a really powerful singing style and blends it with lovely melodic parts, all professionally supported by the other 4 band members. Really nice start for the third day of the festival.

Main stage next, for pretty much my most awaited gig: Hurra Torpedo. Ever heard of appliances metal? Or white stuff metal? Just look up some of their videos. They cover a few famous songs, and also have some Norwegian songs – which I actually don’t know if they are covers or their own written materials. Either way…so two of the band members also played in the opening band of the festival, Black Debbath. So we already knew their skilled guitar/bass playing and they combined the string instruments with…well, march-drumming on an oven top the flat one made of metal with black burners), waffle makes throwing, microwave throwing, drumming on porcelain cups and can’t even remember what else. The third person in the band is the renown Norwegian artists Krisopher Schau – known from many other acts such as The Dogs, The Cumshots and many artistical projects. He is a rather tall person and quite impressive to watch as he keeps all the rhythm line of the concert smashing the lid of a freezer and drumming on a whole cooking machine. At some point, he lifts a heavy wheel and later on a whole washing machine and throws them to the ground. I am not sure if the washing machine had its weight removed, but it was surely lacking the spinning round inner part, since that was worn by Egil on his head for some of the songs. The three guys went all at the end of the catwalk, synchronously lifted 3 iron boards and started playing …what else but…’Iron man’. And all this while they decided to wear the track pants half way down their bums. Schau also delivered a very sexy moment that culminated with him pouring beer down the front of the highly lifted pants. This show had such a good amount of laughter and wow moments. I loved every minute of it and it’s overall my favorite of the festival. It’s so unique and such skillfully delivered. I hope there’s a timelapse somewhere on how they cleaned the stage for the next band.

Getting back to reality while watching Poppy on the vampire stage was not a successful switch. I mean, it was a lot of energy with dancers on the stage and such, but music made little sense and seeing how the management kicked out the photographers after one song (or less) made it for a complete lack of interest for this show after only few minutes. Within Temptation was next on the main stage and that was way nicer to watch and listen to. Sharon del Ade is such an elegant presence and she actually had a corset made in the Norwegian flag style. I guess that scores her a lot of points if she does similar acts in all countries they play. She has a really pleasant voice and the whole music is very soothing and relaxed, a well deserved slow time before the rest of the day would go wilder and wilder.

I would have really loved to catch some of Deafheaven’s performance but body demanded food and I also bumped into some friends so I sadly didn’t make it to the tent in time for more than a small bit of the last song and only watched from far away. And then I had to cross through the Steel Panther crowd, but after their shows became a s*t show of misogyny and way more than the fun glam rock they used to offer many years ago, I refuse to bother paying attention to them. So moving on to one of the toughest choices of the day for me: Dimmy Borgir vs Ugly Kid Joe. And as the Norwegians are easier to catch here in Norway, I opted for my childhood heroes.

Ugly Kid Joe was all over MTV many years ago (I don’t even wanna do the math). They had some of the coolest songs, and videos and easy to understand and relate to lyrics. I loved the live performance I saw with them a while ago and thus I thought to check it out and see how they’d do in 2025. Wow. Whitfield Crane can sing and play the crowd as he wishes. People would jump, sing and do whatever he asks them to. He’s got tons of charisma and energy and holds himself in quite a cool shape. That was lovely to see. As a parenthesis, I think I’m starting to realize how important it is for artists to lean towards a good lifestyle and how much it helps them with a good and rewarding live show. It surely ain’t easy to jump around and scream your lungs out for about an hour, even past your 30s. Not when your touring lifestyle is surely lack of sleep, stress of load ins, sound checks, quick feeding sessions, interviews, concert, load outs and then drive to the next destination. Anyway, after 3 songs in the photopit, I went in the middle of the crowd for singalongs, (mini)jumps and happy faces. It was so damn cool, as they really managed to squeeze in tons of their hits but also blended them with some of the nicer ones from recent albums. I had to shush a bunch of dudes who thought the slower parts of ‘Cats in the cradle’ were for them to talk loud. Not on my watch. That’s a sacred song!!!

With a big smile on my face, I went back to the photopit of the Vampire stage to shoot Meshuggah. It’s so many years since I admired what these guys are doing, not always fully understanding it but somehow finding it to be such a pleasant soothing blend of weirdness. Few years ago when they played in Oslo, at Sentrum scene, the show had a really crazy light show, but it was so much based on strobes and …dark lights (?) so it was impossible to photograph or see the musicians’ faces. Playing in the daylight saved us from that ‘stress’, but we thought we’d only get to photograph some lasers projected on smoke, given the efforts made by the smoke machines to fill the area. Luckily, the wind worked in our advantage and the lights and laser shows seen from the photopit were truly amazing. The whole stage was ‘filled’ by the massive backdrop and it’s lateral additions. I actually kept wondering where that artwork comes from, and I am sure there’s an answer somewhere on the world wide web, but I kept trying to find elements from all of their releases and it felt like a mix of everything. I think it worked fantastic with the lights and laser shows and how the band decides to have all 4 movable members stand at the front and of the stage, look massive and do nothing else than headbang (or kinda bodybang). Drummer Thomas Haake is well hidden behind his massive drumkit and still executed the songs with amazing precision and the calmest of faces.

Watching most of Meshuggah’s show means I skipped Exodus. I heard a lot of people saying it was a crazy, good show and for many it was their favorite at the festival. And it seems to have had an insane amount of crowdsurfers. Hope they’ll be back and won’t clash with a favorite of mine. Last act for the day on the main stage were the Norwegian hard-to-describe-style Kaizers Orchestra. For me, they were one of the first bands I was introduced to when I moved to Norway and back then I couldn’t understand a word they’d sing in their West Norway dialect. Now I’ve come a long way and I can sing along and understand them. However, it’s a band that was difficult to ‘sell’ to my foreign friends when I tried to convince them to watch some songs. Ompa rock, steampunk theme, gasmasks and barrel drumming. But not really Rammstein nor Slipknot. My British friend ended up summarizing it as some sort of Robbie Williams in an Oasis type band, but singing in Norwegian dialect. Whatever you’ll call their music, they surely entertain the crowd. The massive projections on the huge backdrop brought some cool visual elements to the show, but the gentlemen surely got style in delivering both the singing and the instrumental part. Bonus, for me, is to have a contrabass player on stage. That always looks and sounds cool. I have watched Kaizers’ farewell show at Spektrum Scene many years ago, and while I always have mixed feelings about come back tours, I think this worked well as a headliner for a festival day where 3 out of 4 bands on the main stage were Norwegian. The evening ended with tons of dancing and good mood, just as it started. Such a happy day, I’m smiling as I type this review.