2000trees Festival 2025: The Report

Cotswolds-based 2000trees occupies a unique spot on the UK rock festival calendar: heavier than the pop-punk pageant Slam Dunk, not as heavy as its nearby sister festival ArcTanGent, and more intimate than the similarly grassroots Y Not. Once almost solely dedicated to promoting underground British punk and alternative, it’s since branched out to showcasing more renowned stateside luminaries. This year's edition is heralded as the festival's "biggest ever lineup", and, sure enough, Alexisonfire, Taking Back Sunday, and Coheed and Cambria are near the top of the bill – but it’s a certain temperature-raising Irish rap trio that seizes attention on the flyer.

On that note, the first observation to make is that, at a sweltering 32 degrees centigrade, it’s hot. By mid-afternoon on the opening day, the festival's name already feels mocking, given the few spots of shelter available across the sprawling Upcote Farm. The festival’s brief shortage of ice on day two doesn’t help, nor does the festival's confusing layout, as six stages span a 250-acre site. Mercifully, though, one such stage is the aptly-named and heavily-shaded Forest. It’s here that Aberdeen sentimentalists The Xcerts kick off the weekend with a passionate, albeit meandering, set which is clumsily broadcast via silent disco headphones.

Image: Xcerts @ 2000trees Festival 2025 by Gareth Bull

Thursday is when things really heat up, though. It’s the most wide-ranging: local sludge metallers Grief Ritual would feel more at home at Download or Bloodstock if not for their hardcore-tinged vocals and punk ethos; Superbloom engage in lethargic but serviceable throwback grunge; and humdrum Oi! group Rifle sound deliberately rudimentary compared to some of the more technical acts on the bill. On the main stage, alt-metal outfit unpeople are the first unmistakable triumph of the weekend. Their pop hooks, shouty vocals, and rich suspended chords bring to mind Reuben, a noughties band that are much loved at the festival, but this is intermingled with wacky djent breakdowns.

Then, there’s Kneecap. The Irish hip-hop group's presence feels entirely incongruous yet simultaneously appropriate on a weekend during which defiant punk slogans, political proclamations and interlude sermons are frequent. A passer-by even remarks to me that this is the largest crowd they’ve ever seen for a main-stage headliner at trees. While their 2000trees set hasn’t received the same level of public scrutiny as their Glastonbury appearance or TRNSMT cancellation, the band confirms early on that the festival had been "asked" to drop them but stood its ground. They describe the festival as their "favourite in England" and the crowd as "sound cunts"; they respond in kind, waving Palestine flags, setting off flares, and crowdsurfing on inflatables. Although a good 60 to 70 per cent of the set is performed in Irish, it’s hard not to get swept up by the sheer energy: H.O.O.D is already nothing less than a synth-punk anthem, Get Your Brits Out’s bassline house beat is among DJ Próvaí's finest, and the group blitz through cuts from their full-length Fine Art. Suddenly, that’s that, as Kneecap bolt offstage and declare they’re immediately flying off to Bilbao for yet another festival appearance.

On Friday, the energy shifts towards more familiar acts, as Frank Turner reminds us of the festival's roots. He's much loved here – a section of the campsite is even named after him – and he responds by playing Love Ire & Song in full to an enraptured Forest audience. Acoustic belters such as Photosynthesis spark mass singalongs, while Long Live the Queen, which is about a late pal of his, still activates the tear ducts.

In truth, though, it’s only his second-best set of the day. Several hours later, he performs with Million Dead, the poetic hardcore band he made his bones with over 20 years ago. Once thought of as England's answer to At the Drive-In, the band's reunion is among the main draws for 30- and 40-somethings who’ve dutifully attended the festival since its inception. Now an archetypal centrist dad, Turner self-deprecatingly alludes to the band's esoteric literary references and youthful anarchism. He also giggles that Cameron Dean, now back performing with them as a second guitarist having left early on in the band's career, hadn’t even heard the second album until a few weeks ago. You wouldn’t know by hearing them: their stop-start dynamics and frenetic riffs are as thrilling as ever.

Earlier in the day, irreverent Welsh noise rockers Mclusky are similarly stirring on the Axiom stage, and Dave McPherson, who headlined the first iteration of the festival in 2007 as frontman of InMe, performs his own nostalgia-tinged set in the Forest. Some bands from the era have aged worse than others. Second-day headliner Taking Back Sunday don’t quite crash and burn, but Adam Lazzara’s performance is sketchy at best, as he slurs through his band's emo-pop catalogue over a drawn-out 90-minute set. They’re somewhat saved by the crowd, who belt out hits from the seminal Tell All Your Friends with joyful abandon.

Image: Black Foxxes @ 2000trees Festival 2025 by Jez Pennington

Not every performance is so wistful, although there is a marked difference in quality between Twin Atlantic’s anthemic early material and their awkward synthpop experiments. Other new acts represent Scotland more impressively over on The Cave stage, notably Frontierer, with their indelible mathcore chaos, and Glaswegian punks SOAPBOX. Highlights also include French screamo in the form of Birds in Row, and the soundscapes of art rockers Black Foxxes.

Nevertheless, it feels appropriate that the weekend's last hurrah is another fixture of 2000s post-hardcore: Alexisonfire. Frontman George Pettit tears his shirt off and crowdsurfs as they storm through all five of their records with as much vigour and intensity as they can manage, despite the crowd's exhaustion. It’s a fitting conclusion to what can only be described as, to quote the band's abiding hit, a .44 caliber love letter to 2000s post-hardcore. 

Despite the heat, the sprawl and the length, 2000trees remains a romantic celebration for headbangers of a certain vintage. Still, if the organisers are keen to throw more high-octane curveballs like Kneecap into the mix, they might want to stockpile more ice.

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2000trees Festival returns to Upcote Farm, Gloucestershire, 8-12 Jul 2026
2000trees.co.uk