FESTIVAL PREVIEW: Stonedead Festival 2025
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
It’s Download Festival weekend as I write this introduction to Stonedead, bringing home the fact that, as William Shakespeare commented “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date…” and the window for outdoor festivals in the United Kingdom is rather narrow.
Still, what can you do, other than accept it and make hay while the sun shines? With the now firmly ensconced end of open-air season curtain-call of Stonedead a fixture in the hard rock calendar, and with the event now selling out year-on-year, the festival is our last chance to sit in the sun and relax for one day, watching a one stage monster rock show.
Growing from strength to strength each year, Stonedead were always going to have created a headache for themselves after the line-up they assembled last year. Eighties metal heavyweights Saxon, KK Downing and Doro played blistering sets – yet it was Ugly Kid Joe who popped along and stole the show out from under everyone’s noses.
Headlining the 2025 event is the loud, all wide, Al-flippin’mighty, and a continuation of Stonedead’s fruitful relationship with Mr Ricky Warwick. Scheduled to appear at the post-pestilence show of 2021, with his Black Star Riders, the band finally made it to the stage as Blue Oyster Cult’s special guests a couple of years later. Now, Ricky’s late-Eighties/ early-Nineties dirty hard-rockin’ outfit, The Almighty is stepping up and bringing Stonedead to a suitably boisterous conclusion.
Having seen the band many times back in the day and having caught them on the last two November tours, it’s fair to say the old magic is back. No disrespect to Pete Friesen’s work on Powertrippin’, Crank and Just Add Life, but to see and hear the original line-up of Warwick, Tantrum, London and Munroe back together really is a welcome trip down Memory Lane.
To hear once again the raucous power of those rock anthems spilling from the Showground’s PA is an appetite whetter, and the fact that they have undertaken a polling of fan-favourites from which they’ll build their set, makes up want the sun to be going down on Newark on that August Bank Holiday weekend all more.
The term Supergroup is often used to describe collaborations between members of other bands coming together to create anew. The Dead Daisies on the other hand is comprised of road dogs, seasons from campaigns with some of the industries most revered acts.
Formed in 2012 by ex-members of INXS and Mink, the band were quickly recording, releasing and heading off on tour with ZZ Top and Aerosmith, with a line-up of former Guns N’ Roses and Whitesnake members, among others.
Eight albums in a dozen years, including this year’s Lookin’ for Trouble, and the band had hardly deviated from their sworn mission to bring the glorious rock to wherever it is needed. The current line-up includes Whitesnake man, Doug Aldrich, the best singer to front Mötley Crüe, John Corobi finding good use for his excellent vocal abilities, and the drummer of Black Sabbath’s final tour, Tommy Cluefetos, alongside newish bassist, Michael Devin and stalwart original guitarist, David Lowy.
Expect a late afternoon celebration of all things Rock & Roll as The Dead Daisies take no prisoners
Frontman, Andy Scott has been flying the flag for The Sweet since the hey-days of the Seventies glam rock explosion. Disputes with band members over the ownership of the name might have been a distraction but, if the set at Blackpool’s Rebellion Festival last year is anything to go by, then Stonedead is in for a whale of a time as the clocks are turned back half a century and the likes of
Little Willy, Block Buster, Hell Raiser, Fox on the Run, Action and, of course, Ballroom Blitz will have the whole field up and bopping like it’s the Silver Jubilee all over again.
It was really their third album that broke D-A-D big at the end of the Eighties, with the internationally successful No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims, a combination of hard rock and glam aesthetics, all played with a certain swagger.
The album also included a couple of the band’s most recognizable tracks, Sleeping my Day Away and the dangerous Rim of Hell. Even though the music scene changed soon after the success of this album, with the Eighties excesses being superseded by Nineties’ grunge, D-A-D forged on and, to date, have issued a further ten full length records, up to and including the autumn 2024 Speed of Darkness album.
Hailing from Denmark is a good omen too, as Stonedead seem to have a great love of Scandinavia hard rockers. See the successes of H.E.A.T., Bonefide and Eclipse to gauge the reception awaiting their arrival.
There was a time when German power metal maestros, Primal Fear were almost Bloodstock’s house band. Three shows, including a 2006 headline appearance at the indoor iterations, and an Open Air show in 2008, as well as the Saturday headliner of the extremely ill-fated Metal Fest in 2009 – anyone remember that debacle in Dudley? – and Primal Fear looked to be riding high.
There were even rumours that vocalist, Ralf Scheepers would be replacing Rob Halford in Judas Priest, such is the majesty of his singing abilities. Primal Fear is nothing if not a staunch heavy metal band, no airs, no graces, just a devotion to the cause and an unstoppable drive to deliver.
Album number fifteen is due a little after the Stonedead show, and if pure heavy metal is something you’re not overly familiar with, you might want to start getting yourself prepared now.
Also in from Germany will be hard rockers, The New Roses who have UK festival experience from playing at Hard Rock Hell a few years back. That aside, the quartet have toured with the likes of Kiss, ZZ Top and Black Stone Cherry, so it’s safe to assume they know their ways around a big stage.
Recent promo videos for Hold Me Up and When You Fall In Love suggest the band are coming in to pluck those emotional heartstrings though their easy-going style of Americana-sounding tunes.
Surrounding The New Roses in a heavy metal pincer movement come Enforcer, whose anachronistic devotion to straight-up heavy metal has seen them become their country’s biggest export of that particular genre. Expect speedy riffs and some over the top moments from the band, as they unleash their undisputed power upon the Showgrounds.
Black Oak County sound more like they’re from a southern state of the US, rather than Esbjerg, Denmark, with their fiery guitars and hard-hitting choruses. They’ve already become acquainted with Dead Daisies and D-A-D from touring with both bands, so Stonedead will find Black Oak County in familiar company and among friends. Once known as Great White Buffalo, theirs is a sound of a combination of classic rock influences and modern hard rock, sludge and contemporary metal.
Kicking off the whole shebang is Welsh quintet King Kraken who had the unenviable task of playing Bloodstock 2024 at exactly the same time as a little band called Clutch. All credit to the western brethren that they attracted a considerable crowd that day and won many fans. Their second album, March of the Gods emerged in April this year, continuing the momentum generated by debut MCLXXX.
It's advisable to get there early to catch the lads’ set.
Hopefully the damned rain that soaked us all last year has found something better to do with its day and we can enjoy this packed bill of superb hard rock and heavy metal without constantly having to reach for the water-proofs. It’s the one thing the festival organisers have absolutely no control over.
Though they have kicked the can down the road again and have given themselves one huge headache for 2026. How can they keep pulling it out of the bag like this? One can only w
Photo credits: Tim Finch Photography
