Words: Kate Allvey and Rob Dand  //  Photos: Penny Bennett and Paul Lyme

Press Club

Melbourne’s Press Club are one of a handful of Australian bands at Trees this weekend, and their breezy indie-punk has an undercurrent of warmth that makes them perfect main stage material. They’re arriving at Upcote Farm at the tail end of a mammoth European run in support of album four, ‘To All The Ones That I Love’, but this is a classic festival set, drawing from all corners of their back catalogue over just seven songs. The new record’s title track translates particularly well, and a glorious few minutes of cloud cover during jubilant set closer ‘Suburbia’ managing to inspire a lung-busting singalong from pockets of the crowd. Frontwoman Natalie Foster leaps with enviable vitality across the stage monitors and down toward the barrier, a captivating presence at the spearhead of a band who have no doubt just won over a host of new fans, thousands of miles from home. [Rob Dand]

Blackgold 

Taking Slipknot’s lead, Blackgold’s masked rap-metal shakes the main stage awake. ‘One Chance’ channels Limp Bizkit with a more serious streak, acknowledging their nu metal lineage with an assertive update. The demand a lot from their fans but they give a lot back through spot on lyrics and feral bass that could tunnel through the hillside. Dropping in hip hop megamixes, they get those determined to brave the sun bouncing furiously. [Kate Allvey]

Hail the Sun

Hail the Sun are good friends with tonight’s co-headliners Coheed and Cambria, and you can hear it in their sound too. At times, the Californian quintet’s technical post-hardcore sound is so post it’s almost pre-something else, pairing notes of Circa Survive and At the Drive-In with their pals’ penchant for the theatrical. Vocalist and occasional drummer Donovan Melero operates primarily in the higher register, and he has some great mic-throwing moves that would give tonight’s other co-headliners Taking Back Sunday a run for their money, but his performance feels primal rather than choreographed. Their energetic set leans most heavily on latest full length, 2023’s ‘Divine Inner Tension’, but there’s also a partial cover of Tears for Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ and an airing for new single ‘The Drooling Class’. Six albums into their career, it’s something of a surprise that Hail the Sun aren’t held in higher regard in the UK, but this memorable set in front of a curious (if not rapturous) Axiom crowd won’t have done their stock any harm at all. [Rob Dand]

Coilguns

Within the space of two songs, Coilguns frontman Louis Jucker has broken his microphone whilst on a foray into the crowd. His equipment is replaced, but the band also grapple with a temperamental guitar cable throughout the set. Jucker displays all the hallmarks of an eccentric and passionate character, sometimes appearing agitated by the delays, but he is always quick to smooth things over with the crew after each interruption. He repeatedly expresses his gratitude to the crowd simply for turning up, giving the mic over to the front row on more than one occasion to fill time, and unlike most other bands appearing in the Cave this weekend, demands very little from them in return.

The set itself feels gleefully loose; not quite erupting into full chaos, but entertainingly dynamic. Songs from last year’s excellent full-length ‘Odd Love’ dominate, and Jucker is keen to point out the meaning of the album’s title. He speaks about the importance of embracing our differences, and hammers the point home by warmly embracing as many people in the crowd as time will allow, before himself instigating the moshpit that accompanies their final song. All in a day’s work. [Rob Dand]

Frank Turner

Show number 3054 sees the spirit of 2000 Trees distilled into a worshipful Forest stage. Frank Turner’s been a staple of the Trees experience since its inception, but to hear his seminal ‘Live Ire and Song’ in its entirety, solo and acoustic, is something beyond special for Turner’s many fans. The power invested in every chord of ‘Better Man’ smoulders, and the goosebumps raising on our sunburnt shoulders during the title track feel more than real as we punch the air, each lyric a roared psalm. Re-presenting this album is a sublime, and one that means a huge amount to the FTHC faithful. We’ve been on a long journey with Turner and we’re proud to be here with him at his adopted home. [Kate Allvey]

Trashboat

Over on the main stage, Trashboat are keeping it heavy and current, switching between charismatic chorus and empassioned screams through ‘Be Someone’. Their new album is on their minds, and we’re delighted to hear Tobi Duncan’s “personal favourite” track, ‘Filthy Wretches’, in all its blazing ferocity. Paying tribute to the crowd sticking it out in the heat, ‘Shape’ clatters energetically, rewarding our patience. Trashboat strike such a great balance between grunge and heaviness, never succumbing to either, and making the main stage all their own. Self acceptance is their mantra and they preach it through gloriously original noise. [Kate Allvey]

La Dispute

Opening with spoken word poetry is a bold move, but La Dispute’s desolate post-hardcore charm resonates perfectly with the idyllic Forest Stage. Their descent into howls and delicacy on guitar sparks a gentle clap through the trees, ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’ taut and absorbing. From among the many acts claiming a ‘hardcore’ root to their sound, La Dispute stand out as the most sensitive and intelligent, their songs flowing freely across planes of emotion, enigmatic and veiled behind murmured sentiment. [Kate Allvey]

Coheed and Cambria

With an intro as dreamy as the hillside view, Coheed and Cambria glide onstage. The keenest fans caught their mini-Forest stage set this morning, but the biggest stages are where we expect to see Coheed’s space operas presented in their fullest. ‘Goodbye Sunshine’, their recent single, is unveiled in all its power rock glory, sparkling as brightly as the iconic glittery Trees sign at the top of the hill, extended out for full vocal appreciation. It’s all about the classic rock guitar for Coheed tonight, and there’s something oddly inspiring about how their complex, prog-lite sound can unite everyone from girls in Eras Tour shirts and grandparents in bucket hats alike to rapt appreciation of Claudio Sanchez’s vision. The focus on ‘The Father of Make Believe’ cements their latest album as the last necessary brick in becoming the stadium rockers they were born to be. [Kate Allvey]

Million Dead

2025 has truly been the summer of reunions – but while Oasis and Black Sabbath made most of the headlines, tonight’s show heralds the unlikely return of Million Dead, catching the attention of post-hardcore fans in the Gloucestershire area at the very least. They didn’t so much break up as self-destruct, with the band going their separate ways back in September 2005. Now, twenty years later, and owing in no small part to frontman Frank Turner’s cult-like appeal in the strange bubble of this festival, they’re back for one more hurrah. Now a five-piece, featuring both Cameron Dean and Tom Fowler on guitar (who have never actually been in the band at the same time), they emerge to feverish applause, before launching into a slightly abridged version of ‘The Rise and Fall’.

With only two full length records to their name, Turner wryly acknowledges that the setlist is likely to feature most of the songs that people want to hear, and indeed the hour-long communion includes all the expected singles as well as some B-Sides, all now with fleshed-out instrumentation courtesy of the twin-guitar attack. It’s also great to hear the band confident enough in each other’s company to enjoy some self-deprecating humour. Turner makes a few tongue-in-cheek comments about how hard it is to replicate the vocal range he had in his youth after two decades, but aside from asking the crowd to step in to replace drummer Ben Dawson’s blood-curdling scream on ‘Pornography for Cowards’, everything is delivered faithfully. The chorus of ‘Living the Dream’ soars up into the roof of the tent and the closing salvo of ‘I Am the Party’ and ‘Smiling at Strangers on Trains’ predictably has fists in the air and all hell breaking loose down in the front.

After breaking up before they could ever grace 2000 Trees the first time around, they finally made this stage their rubicon. Welcome back, Million Dead. We missed you. I think you missed us, too. [Rob Dand]

Heriot

As the torturous tyranny of the sun subsides, it’s clear that despite today’s 33-degree heat, the real Hell on Earth scenario is now unfolding inside the Cave. Bathing the tent in a sinister red and orange glow, simulating the unholy ambience of last year’s debut full-length ‘Devoured by the Mouth of Hell’, Heriot cultivate an oppressive atmosphere of their own making – and they are in no mood for winding things down. Vocalist and guitarist Debbie Gough is in a particularly demanding mood. She shreds like a demon and continuously calls for more pit action like a woman possessed by another woman who is also possessed. Their twelve song set is practically relentless in its intensity, with only the brooding ‘Opaline’ offering much in the way of relative relief. As they pull down the curtain with a riot-inducing rendition of ‘At the Fortress Gate’, just three years after opening this same stage, the appreciation in the crowd is a reminder of how confident and sharp the band have become in such a short space of time. A triumphant and commanding headline slot. [Rob Dand]

Taking Back Sunday

Exhausted children are wheeled in wagons to the main arena as we stream in for the day’s dessert, chanting along as ‘A Decade Under The Influence’ punctuates our footsteps. Adam Lazzara flings his mic, posing elegantly, as ‘What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?’ grips us, the post punk whirls of ’S’Old’ spiralling into the darkening sky like a promise. Their “love song, if you will”, ‘The One’ soars a rough edge to Lazzara’s voice before hopeful synths devastate in the slowed instrumental. ‘My Blue Heaven’ pulls together everything we hoped from their set as it moves magnetically through crashing riffs and raw emotion

Whether they’re offering up gigantic choruses to bind us together or keeping it tender and personal on ‘Amphetamine Smiles’, Taking Back Sunday offer us a mature and memorable finish to the day, full of heart and class, dealing out everything from lighters -up moments and fists punching the air to breakdowns for dance moves and pure emotional release. There can’t be any complaints about this one-off spectacular: “We hope all your dreams come true,” Lazzara wishes before ‘MakeDamnSure’ and he just might have fulfilled that before he even finished his sentence. [Kate Allvey]

PETE: Are you going to be playing any of this new material on this tour or not?
FRANK: Yeah we are doing one new song. It’s a support tour so we don’t have ages; we’re just putting one in for the time being.

PETE: So would you still say you’re promoting the last album?
BEN: I’d say we are promoting ourselves on this tour, as opposed to promoting any particular record.
FRANK: To be honest, we got asked to do it, and we were quite flattered, it’s a cool thing to do, a nice little string of dates and its lots of fun being on tour.

PETE: How would you say Million Dead came on to the U.K music scene? In terms of your style of music, a lot of the bands say like Funeral for a Friend were really hyped up…
FRANK: I think the whole scene came out at the same time, Hundred Reasons, Lost Prophets, Hell is for Heroes, all those types of bands came out the same sort of time… I’ve always thought it was a bit more coincidental, I don’t we’ve ever really felt part of any particular scene. Maybe we’re completely up our own arses, but we’ve always thought of ourselves as standing outside all that kind of thing.
BEN: I think when we got our first big tour with Pitchshifter, and then we did our tour with Funeral, they were the first too big support tours we did. I think the reason we did them because we thought we were different to both bands. You wouldn’t say we sounded like Pitchshifter, and I don’t think we sound like Funeral, at all. Or for that matter Hundred Reasons, Hell is for Heroes or anything like that. Not to knock any of those bands.
FRANK: I think another thing we are quite keen to stress is that the concept of a scene implies that the sound you make and the music make and the songs you write is being influenced by current surroundings. Obviously we are influenced but I think we write the songs we write anyway, I don’t think it’s important to us whether or not Funeral for a Friend are popular. We’d be making the records we make anyway. We’ve had the success that we’ve had as a band, undeniably is down to the fact that British rock has been popular at the time we’ve been doing what we do.

PETE: What sort of music would you say you are influenced by?
BEN: Everything at the moment. We’re all listening far too much to In Utero by Nirvana. Reinventing the classics.
FRANK: Anything really. Rock music that tries to be interesting and challenging.
TOM: we’ve been listening to the new Converge album in the van today. That’s as big influence on us as anything. I mean I haven’t even heard of Funeral for a Friend. So I don’t know what they really sound like. I know they sound like Iron Maiden rip-off riffs. It’s not something we’re going to try and do.

PETE: What do you think of the British music scene at the minute?
FRANK: It’s all right at the moment. There are a lot of bands around, but there always has been a lot of bands around. It really comes down to the way labels work. A lot of people got signed a couple of years ago. Obviously Funeral are still riding that, Hundred Reasons got dropped; Hell is for Heroes got dropped, bands that got onto majors.
BEN: Because of the fact major labels picked up on it, a lot more people are listening to this kind of rock music, and at the same time indie music’s doing really well.
Frank: I think what’s nice is that at the minute there’s a lot of bands coming through who have seen how Hundred Reasons and Hell is for Heroes got burned, and they are doing their own thing. Bands like Biffy Clyro. They’re doing really fucking good on an independent and have built up a massive following, without ever been involved with a major label. There are a lot of cool bands, like Jet plane Landing is another band that I’m personally a big fan of. They tour their arses off. Crazy fuckers. I think it’s quite cool at the moment. There are quite a lot of bands doing well without needing help from the “corporate man.”

PETE: How easy do you think it is for bands to break through onto the scene at the moment?
BEN: It depends what you mean by break through. If you’re a band and you play music that’s good enough, and you play to enough people, people will like it and you will get a name for yourself playing around. In terms of breaking through and making money out of it, anyone who thinks they are going to make money out of being in a band is a fucking idiot, and is also doing it for the wrong reasons.

PETE: Do you think whilst there’s a lot of bands around, there is a chance of the whole thing getting saturated?
FRANK: Saturation always implies to me that most of the bands you’re talking about are shit anyway. I don’t think you can be saturated by good bands. Saturation occurs when you’ve got a bunch of good bands and loads and loads of crap bands and in that case who gives a fuck? I don’t think there’s any chance of saturation.
BEN: Going back to how difficult it is to break out, a band like Drive Like You Stole It, who are really good, aren’t breaking through like they want, because they don’t sound enough like the kids they want them too. Image is a big thing. A band like us, a lot of people used to say we sounded like Hundred Reasons, which I don’t think we ever have done, and that really came down to Frank’s hair cut, which at the time looked like Colin’s, and people who had never heard of us were saying we sounded like Hundred Reasons. It just doesn’t work like that. At the same time, a lot of these kids criticise bands because they sound too much like the ones they like, and won’t listen to other bands because they don’t sound enough like the bands they like.

PETE: So how easy did you think it was to get yourselves signed?
FRANK: The way it started for us was, you start off going down the same roads, ringing the same people, get the same gigs…. all around the country. Pitchshifter helped us out getting on that first tour, got a lot more people interested, In terms of getting signed, our first album was on Integrity, and this guy Charlie, from Xtra Mile wanted to put out a single of ours, with Integrity, and once we did that they wanted to do an album as well. It’s just a small label run by 2 guys. Being in a band is always going to be hard work, especially if you want to play music that isn’t total fodder. If you’re someone who doesn’t like hard work, don’t join a band.

PETE: In terms of the last album, did that push Million Dead as far as you wanted?
BEN: It could have done a lot more. Because of the fact we didn’t make any money. Basically with our practice schedule, especially living in London where it’s expensive and because we’ve all got jobs and stuff, we practice for 4 hours a week, once night week so for 2 years, that’s how we wrote that first album, I’m proud of everything we release, but we could have done a lot better. It took us 10 days to record it, and if we could have done those 10 days, and then recorded it again, it would have been a much better album. It’s a product of its time, we’re not a cunt like George Lucas going back and changing the original Star Wars film.
FRANK: There’s bit and pieces I’d change about the album, but what’s the point? That was that. That was then. The next record we do, on the day we finish recording it, it will be the absolute pinnacle of what we’ve done, if we’ve done it right.
BEN: Since the first album we’ve come along way. You know listening to it there’s something’s that are slightly cringing. On this album there’s a lot of stuff I want to do writing wise on the drums, that I just can’t do, I’m not good enough. I’m still going to be frustrated I can’t pull it out; maybe we’ll do that on the third album. I think as a band we all want to do stuff and you just keep getting better the more you play. Try do the best you can.

PETE: How much of the new material is written?
FRANK: We’ve essentially finished 3 or 4 songs, but we’ve got this whole month in October when it starts on the 7th, and we’ve got this studio booked all day everyday.
BEN: We write pretty fast, baring in mind we usually have 4 hours a week, now we have 12 hours a day for a month. We’ll probably end up killing each other.

PETE: And is this new material different or is it a continuation?
FRANK: It’s different. Part of the reason its different is because Cameron our original guitarist quit, Tom’s with us now, and we write collectively as a band, so obviously Tom does his own thing. It will be Million Dead but it’ll be different.
BEN: It was getting different anyway.
FRANK: I suspect that a lot of people, you know what its going to be like, all the kids are going to crawl out of the woodwork and say, “I prefer the first album,” just because they’re waiting to be able to say that, and they will probably say, “I prefer Cameron’s guitar playing,” it’s fucking bull shit though. We were writing songs with our old guitarist before he quit which were way different from our last record. It would be totally tedious to repeat what you’ve done before. I wouldn’t fucking bother. What’s the point? It’s boring. So yeah, it will be different. There will be the same continuity between the same four people…
BEN: Well it’s not the same…
FRANK: The same people with the same ideas.
BEN: I just think the main difference will be it will be lots better. I can play better, he (Frank) can sing better, Jules can play better, we work together better, and I think the main difference is we are taking a month away, its really going to be a product of us all there at one time, as opposed to what happens generally at practice, and by the end of the practice you get a song done, and your writing it, and you’ve got to come up with a part for the next bit, and you cant do it a week later, by that point the inspirations gone. You forgot what’s going on. So I think the very fact we’re writing the album in a completely different way to what we did before will make a change.

PETE: Where do you want the new album to take you?
FRANK: Musically or success wise?
PETE: Both…
BEN: Australia.
FRANK: I think I just want this album to be the best thing all of us can produce, and I’m confident that we’ll do that, cos we’re pouring everything into it. Success wise, it would be nice to make a living out of what we do, I think that’s what our dream is. If we can afford to go on tour, and not make sure we have to be back in order to pay rent.
BEN: It makes life very stressful if you’re trying to juggle playing in a band, and if we could just remove that stress, we’d all be better adjusted human beings.

PETE: Someone on the punktastic boards, when we asked if anyone had any questions, wanted to know what happened with the organisers of Reading festival, and will you ever play Reading festival again…?
BEN: (laughs) As far as we know, the story we heard, the man who organises Reading Festival is a big Smiths fan, and he walked in when we were supporting Thursday at the Astoria in the middle of our Smiths cover, and he hated it that much he didn’t put us on Reading.

PETE: Where do you see yourselves in a year’s time?
BEN: probably here.
FRANK: What I would like to say is in a year’s time we’ve played in a lot more countries, and produced a new record that lives up to our expectations, and hopefully people agree with that. The important thing is I have absolutely no time for satisfying fan bases as a band, you have to play to the best of our ability, and not give a shit about what everyone thinks about what we do. But if they like it that’s cool.