Skull Fest 2025 Reportback

Photos by Joe The Photo Guy

Another humid mid-atlantic August means another Skull Fest in lovely steel city, Pittsburgh, PA. I know, I know, “another fest?” How many fests do we really need? I don’t really know, but for me at least, Skull Fest feels like the one that breaks the mold. Instead of being a weekend of punk and hardcore curated by one person’s taste, Skull Fest is a true collaborative effort. You get a mix of punk that is sure to hit all your sensibilities: punk, hardcore, hardcore punk, crust, goth, and for better or worse, even oi.

The amount of bands playing Skull Fest is overwhelming and you are sure to get as much as you can handle, but the main reason I love going to Skull Fest is hanging out. Most shows have an opportunity to see all your friends, there’s the punk’s picnic, the afterparty, and of course the trips to Page’s Dairy Mart for some vegan Oreo peanut butter arctic swirls or eating Spak Bros by the Sphynix with boobs statues in that graveyard.

Amerikkka’s current political climate and tightening border policies had a noticeable impact on the usual handful of international bands this year. Regardless, there were still some banger sets every night. I wasn’t there, but my collaborator on this report back, Joe the Photo Guy, said SEX DWARF (who might have been the only fully international band?) were wild Thursday night.

My weekend started Friday by missing all of the matinee show because somehow it ran way ahead of schedule. The last half of ZYCLONE’s last song was good though! Later that day, I popped into Spirit to catch SHORT LEASH (who played a surprising and welcomed 86 MENTALITY cover), and IRON LUNG. Those 2 dudes still got it.

After some Sexless // No sex I had a lovely walk over to the Profane Existence 36th anniversary show. FLOWER played another powerful set and were followed by the first of 2 DESTROY sets of the weekend. I didn’t know what to expect from the DESTROY set but it rocked. They were tight, loud, and still angry. As a sidenote, I had no idea the guitarist of NO STATIK was in DESTROY. Sick. Upstairs from the Profane show, I caught EARLY GRAVE, a killer band from Philadelphia, PEACE TALKS, who are always great live, and UNIFORMED SERVICES, another band from Boston who has that Boston sound and does it really well. I tried to stay up for the aftershow, but I’m a morning person and I know my limitations, so I unfortunately never got to see SEX DWARF. Bummer.

Saturday started at the Prevention Point matinee show. This is where my enjoyment of hanging out started to conflict with seeing all the bands playing. I ended up only seeing CHILDREN WITH DOG FEET, who played a very sick PENI cover, and WHO PAYS?. I also got in trouble for playing a game of Commander in an area we shouldn’t have been in, but that’s a story for another time. From there I headed back to Spirit for that night’s crust show. DESTRUCT proved once again that they are one of the best bands in this horrible country I live in. DROPDEAD ripped. After all these years the anger, passion, and commitment the message is still there. Bob gave several impassioned speeches, something I feel is missing from most shows today. I caught the first half of DESTROY’s second set and it was still good.

From Spirit I headed over to Spirit Quest where I will admit I went to the Oi show, but friendship rocks and I wanted to see my homies in SECLUSION play. Genuinely enjoyed their set. Afterwards, I hung around to catch some of NO TIME where their singer Adam (who is also a Skull Fest organizer) once again put his body on the line and broke his hand from rocking too hard.

Much like the night before, no matter how much I intended to go to the aftershow to see CONDUMB, a band who put out one of my favorite records of the year, I went to bed.

Sunday’s matinee show is usually my favorite show of the weekend. The lineup for this one had some last minute changes. MACHINE GUN and DEMONSTRATE, a band that proves straightedge is still punk, unfortunately didn’t play, BUT we were blessed with a second FLOWER set. Right before that bonus set was ULTIMATE DISASTER who give their fellow Richmond dwellers, DESTRUCT, a run for their money for best band in Amerikkka at the moment. UD into FLOWER was my favorite two set combo of the weekend. I would listen to a UD/FLOWER split until my turntable broke. The one thing noticeably missing from Sunday afternoon was the Evil Ways wrestling show that has happened the past few years. I think Cole puts a lot of effort and care into giving a group of people who might not know what the fuck is going on a good show. The man truly cares about the art form of deathmatch wrestling.

My Skull Fest closed out with the STORMCROW gig. I caught ZYCLONE again who fucking RIPPED, holy shit that band is good live, and LANGUID, who are from Edmonton, Canada but might as well be from Sweden. Absolutely perfect ANTI-CIMEX worship. This was STORMCROW’s first gig on this side of the country, which sounds like it can’t be true but I guess it is! It was a very sick set, they sounded great and was a nice endcap to the weekend.

I did not expect to write this much about the weekend. I think how I approach Skull Fest is different from others, but punk gave me a ton of great friendships and for me it’s a celebration of that. Can’t wait for next year. Thanks to Joe for the pictures. I think he does a great job capturing “the culture”.