REVIEW: Summer of Loud Festival at Jones Beach Theater | 07.20.2025

Show Reviews

Jul 24

Written By

There are plenty of great ways to spend a hot summer day in late July: hitting the beach, grilling burgers, drinking cold beer, going to a music festival—or combining all of the above into a day of absolute debauchery.

Such was the scene on Sunday at Jones Beach Theater for the Summer of Loud Festival tour, which more than lived up to its name.

The lineup for this tour is nuts: Killswitch Engage, I Prevail, Beartooth, Parkway Drive, The Devil Wears Prada, The Amity Affliction—each one of them has headlined sold-out tours of their own over the past year. To have them all at the same venue, on the same stage, on the same day? That’s the kind of opportunity no metal fan could, or should, pass up.

Alpha Wolf and Dark Divine were on hand to open up the show as well, and despite the afternoon heat being in full force, an eager and undeterred crowd began filling their seats as soon as the doors opened. I had a similar sentiment and excitement for the concert photography marathon that was ahead of me.

There were a number of photographers on hand for the show, and given the tight space in the pit, there was concern about safety in the event of crowd surfing. In other words, if all of the security was catching surfers, there’s no one left to make sure you don’t get a boot to the back of the head while you’re trying to frame a shot. The rule became that we could shoot bands from the pit until the crowd surfing started. Once it did, we’d shoot from front-of-house for the remainder of the night.

My guess? We’d be halfway through the first song of the third act when we’d get pulled. My hope? Everyone would collectively develop concert activity amnesia and forget about the concept of crowd surfing, leading them to still have fun while allowing us the ability to shoot from the pit. One can dream. Ultimately, I knew my options would be limited once we were shooting from front-of-house, so I hoped to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

“Are you alive?” asked Dark Divine vocalist Anthony Martinez to the crowd, whose cheers confirmed they were indeed. The sun was beating down heavy, and Dark Divine responded in kind with heavy chugging riffs to get the crowd moving. I knew as soon as I saw the band’s face paint that it would be a fun photo shoot—face paint does a lot of legwork in making eye-catching photos.

Alpha Wolf turned it up a few notches with their set of hardcore-influenced anthems. The pit shifted from shoves to spin kicks as fans built a wall of death only to tear it down. “You’re at the beach,” vocalist Lochie Keogh said to the crowd toward the end of their set. “I want to see some surfing!” Shit.

A steady stream of crowd surfers responded to Keogh’s call, and I watched their joy with bittersweet eyes as I knew this meant we’d be front-of-house for the remainder of the night. My guess wasn’t that far off, at least.

Our new photo spot was a few rows back from the GA pit. I had my 70-200mm but knew it wouldn’t cut it, so I set my crop to 1.6x with the hopes of it giving the shots a boost. It’s not much, but if you’re going to be cropping the photo anyway, the added confidence gained from seeing the photo closer to how it will be is worth sacrificing some photo quality.

I had been looking forward to The Amity Affliction’s set, and while I was bummed to be experiencing it from afar, the band delivered an “in your face” energy that could be felt to the furthest seats on the balcony. Their power was consistent, slowing down if only for a moment, only to come in twice as heavy as before.

Vocalist Joel Birch’s hat presented a challenge when getting shots of him, while the rest of the band—save for drummer Joe Longobardi—were easier gets. I’d completely resigned that drummers weren’t going to get much to work with photo-wise for the remainder of the night, but was still determined to get something.

I played around with double exposure for a bit, as that’s been my go-to for adding some extra energy to concert photos shot from a distance, and I think I got a few halfway decent ones.

I felt like I found my stride a bit with The Devil Wears Prada’s set, but I think it’s more likely that it was just because the band was tearing the house down from the start. Capturing their energy was as easy as pointing my camera and pressing the shutter; they did the rest.

Opening with “Watchtower” from their 2022 album, Color Decay, the band tore through their set with intensity and emotion. I’ve covered this band twice before on Dangit Bee!, and every time I’m surprised and reminded just how heavy their performances can be.

More double exposure experimentation led to one of my favorite shots of the night:

And just like that, we were halfway through the show. I’ll be honest, I was dragging a bit by this point. Maybe it was the heat or the surprisingly delicious cheeseburger and fries that I ate between sets—or a combination of the two—but either way I was in need of a pick-me-up. Parkway Drive was more than happy to be a conduit for that.

Bringing fire both musically and literally, Parkway Drive played banger after banger to the delighted roar of the crowd. The guitar lick in “Glitch” has been stuck in my head ever since. Shooting from afar is admittedly a better, albeit safer, way to shoot shows with fire, so I was grateful to have that viewpoint from which to work. The first three songs were over before I knew it and suddenly my energy was back in time to enjoy the rest of the set. The band closed with “Crushed”—an apt description for the way in which they managed to go out with a bang and an epic drum solo.

Beartooth made me realize how much I miss stage props in a world of digital effects and LED screens. The band had a giant inflatable snake that spanned the width of the stage which just made everything inherently cooler.

Despite crowdsurfing being the catalyst for our relocation, I had to admit that photographing the crowd surfers and their interaction with vocalist Caleb Shomo made it more than worth it.

I Prevail brought us into the home stretch and got right to business with “Bow Down,” determined not to waste a single second of their 50 minutes of allotted time. Guitarist Dylan Bowman did a fantastic job stepping up to handle clean vocals, providing a nice contrast to Eric Vanlerberghe's brutal screams.

The lights were dark for much of the first three songs, especially during “Bow Down,” when the band was mostly silhouetted. The situation improved slightly in the second and third songs, but it was still the lowest-lit set of the day—which, come to think of it, was also the first set without the handy light source known as the sun.

This ended up being my most sparse photo set of the day as a result. I got a few decent shots but nothing that I was overly excited about, despite my best efforts.

In perhaps the most surprising move of the day, I Prevail broke out a cover of Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" that was quite brutal, and apparently confusing to the Gen Alphas behind me who were trying to piece together how this type of mashup was even possible. I for one am here for it—let's convert Swifties into metalheads!

After a full day of nonstop metal, the crowd's appetite for more persisted until Killswitch Engage showed up to provide the ultimate satiation. To borrow a phrase from CM Punk, it was "clobberin' time" the minute the band hit the stage. The music exploded and the pit followed suit.

This band is just plain fun to watch. Between the frenzied stage cardio and comedy of guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz and the earnestness and passion of vocalist Jesse Leach, a Killswitch Engage show feels like a party celebrating the shared experience of personal emotional darkness and our ability to overcome it.

Leach recounted a time he rode his bike by the theater and wondered who played such a big space—he repeated the bike ride earlier in the day to celebrate his band headlining the venue. He was now the person he had wondered about, which was beautifully poetic. It was a milestone that was well-earned by a band that has more than put in the work to get to where they are today.

From a photo perspective, I was reminded again just how much I had been relying on the sun during prior sets. Shooting from a distance through a haze of smoke and fog while relying only on lights that change by the second to illuminate your subjects, who are also moving a mile a minute, can certainly be tough.

I took over 600 photos and somehow only came out with 23 images that I feel confident in sharing, with no standouts to show off. It was a bummer, for sure, but sometimes that's just how it goes.

Still, it was a thrill to watch the show and sing along to some of my favorite Killswitch tunes like "My Curse" and "Hate By Design." A great way to spend a Sunday, if I do say so myself.