SLIPKNOT, POWERWOLF, SKILLET, HARDY, POPPY, KITTIE, ABBATH, WALLS OF JERICHO, SYL x EYES, JULIE CHRISTMAS, GÅTE, RISE OF THE NORTHSTAR, GABESTOK, BATTLESNAKE, TETRARCH, THROWE and HEAVE BLOOD AND DIE will visit next year’s festival.
The first COPENHELL 2025 headliner is ready: The Iowa superstars from SLIPKNOT will return to Copenhagen with their explosive energy, aggressive sound and insanely entertaining chaos of a stage show. Everyone who has experienced – and survived! – a concert with these masked maniacs can confirm that it is like a cathartic ritual, where both the audience and the band go absolutely wild until every last remnant of energy has left both body and mind!
Bombastic sound and grandiose compositions are the keywords when POWERWOLF takes to the stage with their catchy power metal. Their lyrics revolve around vampires, werewolves and all kinds of other mystical gothic creatures, and the stories are told with crushing drums, heavy guitar riffs, beautiful organ melodies and, not least, charismatic front man Attila Dorn’s operatic vocals. The festival site will no doubt resound with atmospheric singing from the audience together with the popular Germans.
The American band SKILLET is known for their intense combination of rock, electronic music and symphonic elements in their deeply personal songs. Since 1996, the band fronted by the dynamic married couple John and Korey Cooper has released 11 studio albums and achieved two Grammy nomination and two double Platinum albums, and they have toured with a variety of great rock bands in recent years. Their music is uplifting and full of positive messages, delivering everything from melodic power ballads to hard guitar-driven ragers that speak to several generations of rock fans.
The country genre is much more than just retrospective old men wearing cowboy hats and chewing on straws while they cast doomy looks at unending fields – it has also fostered the very unusual singer HARDY: A country superstar who has written countless song hits for other musicians, and who proceeded across the rock genre’s stony stubble field and jumped over the fence into the nu-metal area and now releases music that is truly original. His rare brand of redneck hybrid music is a very efficient rebellion against the old Nashville virtues and a colossal crowd pleaser.
The internet star POPPY speaks directly to a whole new generation of metal lover, and she has taken the entire world by storm in recent years with her unpredictable leaps between electro pop, nu-metal, heavy metal, industrial rock and dark pop. She moves effortlessly back and forth between the cute and the gruesome with her experimental aesthetics, and her alternative combination of metal and soft pop is a deliberate genre identity crisis. This concert will be an experience with a young and incredibly independent star!
The iconic and charismatic metal frontman ABBATH is raw black metal energy incarnate, and he has been instrumental in setting the standard for extreme metal for many years. He is well-known for his corpse-painted face, intense guitar style and icy-cold vocals – and not least his days of glory with the band Immortal. He will visit COPENHELL 2025 with the songs from this very band, and the audience can start looking forward to a great reunion with immortal black metal classics!
Screaming guitars. Warnings. Thousands of marching steps. The intro to ’No one can save you from yourself’, the newest album from hardcore/metalcore legends WALLS OF JERICHO, clearly shows that the band has never given up their resistance fight. After 20 years on the stage, this quintet definitely isn’t ready to retire and just keep their mouths shut. They love rubbing salt into open wounds – there is no softness to be found here whatsoever! Metallic greatness meets classic hardcore in a maelstrom of crazy riffs and enormous breakdowns.
The Danish hardcore scene is on fire these days, and COPENHELL celebrates this in 2025 with a meeting between EYES and SYL in a very special concert experience, where the two bands take turns playing their respective songs on the same stage. Expect total maniacal chaos when the two groups engage in a human ping-pong battle and drag both each other and the audience through an inferno of furious sound and whirling madness!
After being the vocalist of bands like Made Out of Babies and Battle of Mice, as well as various experimental music projects, JULIE CHRISTMAS released her solo debut, ‘The Bad Wife’, in 2010. No less than 14 years would pass by, with guest performances with Cult of Luna, among others, before this idiosyncratic American artist released her second album, ‘Ridiculous and Full of Blood’, in 2024. Her new album is a autobiographical release that covers the singer’s impressive range, all the way from alt-pop to post-metal, and it provides a great insight into the universe that the COPENHELL 2025 audience will experience. Expect to see genre conventions be torn down in a gripping concert with complex compositions and remarkable sonic variety.
The folk rock phenomenon GÅTE has become an important part of Norway’s music history in the last decades, with an unparallelled fusion of traditional melodies, spellbinding lyrics and electric rock energy. The band from Trondheim became nationally famous in the beginning of the ‘00s, and these music pioneers’ popularity eventually spread to the rest of the Nordic region. After a longer 12-year hiatus, the band was reunited in 2017 and delighted both fans and critics with the first new single in over a decade and the critically acclaimed album ‘Svevn’.
Fiery metalcore meets the manga universe with French outfit RISE OF THE NORTHSTAR that combines raging riffs, hip-hop beats and Japanese aesthetics in a brutal and original concept. East meets West in their distinctive stylistic fusion of Shōnen manga, Japanese street fashion and ’90s hardcore nostalgia and infectiously energetic metalcore that will force you to not stand still. This is a band with their very own identity and style – and not least music that will hit the audience hard!
The Copenhagen band GABESTOK is the epitome of the black metal spirit, where the raw, punked and embittered expression is delivered through an uncompromising, unpolished and ruined sound. Their texts, with Danish lyrics, are dripping with pitch-black humor and misanthropy that defines the genre. Punk meets garage rock, black metal is fused with heavy metal, and everything is smothered in a penchant for gothic ‘70s horror movies and westerns. In other words, a true metal bastard that refuses to be limited by genres or expectations!
The seven-piece Australian cult band BATTLESNAKE stubbornly defies all attempts to describe them. You won’t find heavier band names anywhere, and they serve their heavy rock with clear nods to great acts like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Queen, King Gizzard and Ghost – and lots of tongue in cheek. Get ready for true classic rock ’n’ roll when the band, wearing white satin gowns and with a series of silly Monty Python-style gags and irresistable charm fire their retro cannon and send us all back to the awesome and carefree ‘80s with their crazy hero music.
The Los Angeles quartet TETRARCH has one foot planted in groove-oriented nu-metal and the one in maimingly heavy hardcore. Their music is inspired by everything from Metallica, Trivium and Linkin Park to Lamb of God, Korn and Slipknot and effectively combines melodic passages with unrestrained aggression. This is intense modern metal with a monstrous sound that has hit home with the streaming audience and reaches out far across the edge of the stage!
The Copenhagen act THROWE is known for their pitch-black behavioral and Danish-language dark hardcore that leaves the audience soaked and battered after every one of their intense live performances. Torment, powerlessness and the battle against inner demons permeate the band’s ugly blackened hardcore that speaks to the soul’s deepest darkness.
Through the years, the Norwegian act HEAVE BLOOD & DIE has been on an interesting sonic journey that has taken them from regular metal towards a unique post-metal/post-punk expression. Their lo-fi music is melancholic, atmospheric and psychedelic with a sound that is defined by buzzing synth, hypnotizing rhythms and woolly fuzz guitar.
4-day tickets for COPENHELL 2025 are available through www.copenhell.dk or directly at Ticketmaster. 1-day tickets and 1+1-day tickets will be released later in November
COPENHELL 2025 bands announced so far:
SLIPKNOT - DREAM THEATER - IN FLAMES - POWERWOLF - LORNA SHORE - SKILLET - HARDY - MYRKUR - HEAVEN SHALL BURN - POPPY - KITTIE - SODOM - ABBATH - MNEMIC - ALIEN ANT FARM - GLORYHAMMER - KIM DRACULA - SYLOSIS - ANAAL NATHRAKH - WALLS OF JERICHO - SYL X EYES - JULIE CHRISTMAS - GÅTE - WILL HAVEN - STRYCHNOS - RISE OF THE NORTHSTAR - GABESTOK - BATTLESNAKE - WIEGEDOOD - WORMROT - CASTLE RAT - GUILT TRIP - ASHES OF BILLY - CONAN - GORILLA ANGREB - BRAT - TETRARCH - THROWE - YOSEMITE IN BLACK - HEAVE BLOOD AND DIE - THUS - SYRACUSÆ
