REVIEW: Stonedead Festival 2025 with The Almighty, Sweet and The Dead Daisies

Planet Rock was in Nottinghamshire on Saturday 23rd August to watch The Almighty top a monster bill at a sold-out Stonedead Festival.

“Let the madness begin,” roars Stonedead Festival gate guard Paul Wright as he officially declares Saturday’s main event open. Paul is part of the legion of good-spirited staff, mostly volunteers, who help make the Nottinghamshire event stand out on the festival calendar.

As the team wave in early risers through the event’s miniature recreation of the famous Donington tyre arch, it’s exactly 45 years and one week since the first Monsters of Rock took place at the latter – now of course home to the multi-faceted Download. It’s Monsters of Rock, or at least the vibe of it, that Chris Sumby and his fellow Stonedead organisers have sought to replicate, with more than a pinch of success – the 2026 event has sold out already.

In fact, there’s slightly more to it than the one-day-one-show principle it was founded on. Yesterday’s now traditional Friday Night Party, ably hosted by Planet Rock’s Paul Anthony, featured a trio of bands as the sun went down. The ‘party’ now attracts no fewer than 4,500 people, and this year kicked off with a set from the highly touted Jayler, a refreshing rather than jaded revival of classic rock’s genesis. They were followed by groove-laden German rock n’ rollers Sweet Electric, a halfway house between AC/DC and Black Crowes in a set that even witnessed an onstage marriage proposal.

Acclaimed melodic rock veterans Tyketto, who were prevented from playing here in 2020 by that pesky pandemic, rounded things off with a typically honed set of lighter burning anthems. If you’re missing Danny Vaughn’s crew already, you can see them headlining Planet Rock’s Winter’s End festival, which starts on 29th January next year.

Today’s main event, hosted as always by the irreverent Krusher, is blessed by warm but not sweltering temperatures. First to feel the heat – literally, due to their set’s near non-stop turrets of flame – are King Kraken. Proper heavy, proper dark metal from the valleys of Wales it is, and not for the first time this impressive outfit has won a poll to play here. They pulled off the same thing at last year’s Planet Rockstock, and you don’t need a degree in statistics to work out why. They perform metal with a frosty heart, tracks like ‘Green Terror’ and ‘Chainsaw Saviour’ imbued with sea salt and anchor-sized riffs.

As King Kraken finish, Chris Sumby steps out to announce a surprise set. Minutes later, in tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, former Skin guitarist Myke Gray leads us through a four-song Sabbath special, firstly featuring Crowley singer Lidya Balaban’s pin-sharp voice on ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’. That’s followed by all three members of Florence Black working with Myke on ‘Children of the Grave’, ‘Supernaut’ and, of course, ‘Paranoid’. As Myke magics up those chasm-hopping riffs in ‘Supernaut’ there’s more than a few emotions bubbling in this crowd, possibly including those of this writer…

Danish hard rockers Black Oak County were never going to be able to follow that – indeed, there’s a touch of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ to their set. After a few of their own, perfectly decent songs, we hear their own take on ‘Paranoid’, and it isn’t long before we get a slice of ‘War Pigs’ too. If Sweden’s Enforcer are enforcing anything it’s staunch adherence to power metal basics. Nothing they do is bad – in fact, this is metal that gleams from every angle – it’s just that theirs is a formula that’s repeated throughout their set, changing gear only for the slightly more anthemic ‘From Beyond’.

The New Roses are another little history lesson, albeit one delivered in more chewable, flavoursome chunks. Led by the captivating but daftly named Timmy Rough, he of film star physique and more than capable voice, the band are like a Bon Jovi that never grew up. There’s audience participation, plenty of ‘woah-woahs’ and some infectious, party machine rockers like ‘The Usual Suspects’ and euphoric closer ‘Down by the River’.

As trad metal acts go, Primal Fear are a little more flexible than Enforcer. Led by man mountain Ralf Scheepers, a frontman that’s as much Hulk as he is Halford, their start is bizarrely quiet, as if the PA has been turned down, but it’s corrected after a minute. ‘The Hunter’, a more recent addition to their set, is as good as anything the multi-national band has done, and they’re a fine if predictably coloured feather in metal’s horned helmet.

D-A-D, or Disneyland After Dark as their backdrop proudly proclaims them, are hard rockers that grew uncomfortably from glam metal’s endgame. Their big international debut, 1989’s ‘No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims’ made sense at the time, reaching a jaded audience curious for change. Today, their standalone concentration of that scene’s shouty hooks with their own darkly hued alt-country continues to propel them. A much bigger deal back home in Denmark, they do in truth struggle to connect here.

There are obviously no such problems for Sweet. Eccentric six-string veteran Andy Scott is the classic line-up’s only living member, but this current incarnation is a perfect foil for his devilishly tuneful hit-making. This is a widescreen, 3D take on one of the 1970s greatest British acts, and hit follows hit – ‘Hell Raiser’, ‘Teenage Rampage’, the exquisite ‘Love Is Like Oxygen’, and a closing pair of songs so famous that hearing them in this field near Newark feels oddly unreal. The siren and spectacle of ‘Block Buster!’; the glittery glam attack of ‘The Ballroom Blitz’. Brilliant.

A few of us, again possibly including this writer, eat a slice of humble pie when The Dead Daisies turn out to be a whole load better than we were expecting. The line-up, clearly, is stellar. You don’t go far wrong with a guitar legend like Doug Aldrich in your ranks, plus singer John Corabi – all gravel and sandpaper but totally able to hit those big notes – and then there’s ex-Ozzy and Sabbath drummer Tommy Clufetos, a man who strikes those tubs as if possessed by rock gods. More significant even than this is their collective live sound. It’s heavier, it’s sharper and it’s stronger in every way than their recordings would suggest.

Who knows, maybe David Lowy’s band has been downing a few whiskies with the headliners. Doing stuff with power? The Almighty know no other way. Dammit, they even start with a song called ‘Power’. Sure, they might be a nostalgia act – they’ve no intent to record new material that we’re aware of – but there’s nothing wrong with looking back at things that came with this much brute honesty. Led of course by the ageless Ricky Warwick, their set raises fists towards freedom. It’s a wind-in-the-hair trip, music that embraces the bludgeon of Motörhead but understands how much more powerful everything seems when you build melody into the mayhem.

And so it is tonight. The setlist has been selected by a fan poll, but it’s basically the same set of songs they’d have played anyway. The tyre-screeching ‘Jonestown Mind’, the self-healing candle of light that is ‘Little Lost Sometimes’, and things like ‘Welcome To Defiance’, ‘Crank And Deceit’, ‘Addiction’; all a gear-shifting banquet of fiery grunge, and snarling, punky metal. Few look more intense than Warwick delivering this catharsis, and due to his understandable commitment to other bands, gigs by this noblest of heritage acts don’t come around too often. They consequently seem all the more special when they do. A little like Stonedead itself.

Stonedead Festival 2025 in photos:

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