FKA twigs, Wolf Alice & Nine Inch Nails stand out at 2025’s varied and forward-thinking edition of Open’er Festival

The festival’s aforementioned penchant for unlikely double bills is in evidence again on Thursday; after a fun, buoyant, if slightly one-note turn by South African megastar Tyla, there is the prospect of industrial metal mainstays Nine Inch Nails. No word quite sums this band - and indeed its apparently ageless frontman, Trent Reznor - quite like ‘intensity’, and it’s clear from the moment they open with a roaring ‘Somewhat Damaged’ that the fact the band have no new material to promote is not going to slow them down. This European run, dubbed the Peel It Back tour, takes its name from a line in ‘March of the Pigs’, a key cut from 1994’s 'The Downward Spiral', so it’s no surprise to see that masterwork of spiralling self-loathing dominate the setlist, from the febrile ‘Closer’ to the seething ‘Heresy’. The light show, as we’ve come to expect from Nine Inch Nails, is retina-scorching, but perhaps what makes this the standout set of the weekend is the amount of heart it has; the band take the stage to the strains of Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Audrey’s Dance’, from Twin Peaks, and the spirit of Reznor’s departed mentor is close at hand throughout, whether in the jazzy, Lynchian detour of ‘God Break Down the Door’ or the searing take on the band’s 1995 collaboration with David Bowie, the ever-relevant ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’.

Friday at the festival feels like something of a British invasion. An admirable element of Open’er’s approach is that they’re quite happy to put the big hitters on early, which means we get to see Little Simz on the main stage before the sun’s so much as begun to set (and, as an aside, the sunsets at Open’er are stunning, although you’d have to ask a meteorologist what it is about the Baltic coast that makes them so gorgeous). Buoyed by the release last month of sixth album 'Lotus', Simz’s star power is absolutely undeniable across a hit-packed set, and the consensus among the British journalists on-site is that there’s something genuinely moving about seeing this North London girl hold crowds in the palm her hand so far from home.

Speaking of Londoners, the day’s outstanding performance comes not from Simz but FKA twigs; she brings her 'Eusexua' show to Open’er in all its sweaty, writhing glory. The record, and its accompanying live show, were inspired by the warehouse raves she would lose herself in whole filming The Crow out in Prague, and she genuinely succeeds in making the Tent stage feel like Berghain, with an astonishingly well-choreographed - and entirely uncompromising - three-act show. By the time she reaches the hits - ‘Perfect Stranger’, ‘Cellophane’ - it’s almost a jolt to the system to be reminded of her pop credentials; you feel as if you’ve just watched her reinvent dance music.

Nobody is likely to accuse tonight’s headliners, Muse, of reinventing anything any time soon; they remain on the same carousel of daft riffs and even dafter political musings. Their set is reliably bombastic if thematically asinine - being lectured on how we are all servile lackeys of the military-industrial oligarchy is a difficult pill to swallow when it comes from Matt Bellamy, a multi-millionaire who lives in Los Angeles in a mansion he bought from Pete Sampras. Still, the bangers still bang - ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ and ‘Knights of Cydonia’ are all cases in point - and the trio rip through them with gusto; if they’re bored of playing them, you’d never know.

Somebody else who’ll never get bored of playing her old songs is Annie Clark, not least because she never plays them the same way twice. There is always some overarching concept to each St Vincent tour, and typically your mileage will vary with her; she’s sometimes fantastic, sometimes frustrating. At Open’er, she’s the former; the crunching guitars and devil-may-care energy of her last album, 'All Born Screaming', seem to have freed her up onstage, as she delivers a rock-driven set that ends with her playing a sped-up version of ‘New York’ from the sound desk. She stays just the right side of arch - and she hasn’t always.

The final day of the festival sees Linkin Park headline, sounding remarkably reliable for a band who have a new lead singer; Emily Armstrong’s voice sounds like it was tailor-made in a lab for the old songs, even if the new ones drag. Before that, though, there’s some terrific local talent on show; rapper Hubert owns the Alter stage with his winning stage presence, taking his evocative, thoughtful brand of rap and reinventing it for the live arena - ‘kobayashi’ is a particular standout. The outstanding Polish set of the weekend comes on the same stage, later; experimental rockers Trupa Trupa are sensational. Local boys from nearby Gdańsk, they are thrillingly unpredictable, with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski and Wojtek Juchniewicz trading jagged guitar lines and howled vocals as they run the stylistic gamut from Fugazi to Can via Sonic Youth. No wonder both Henry Rollins and Iggy Pop are confirmed fans.

What feels like Sunday’s headline set comes over on the Tent stage. Wolf Alice were a late booking, announced a couple of weeks before the festival kicked off, as one of only a clutch of shows they’re playing before fourth record 'The Clearing' arrives at the end of next month. On this evidence, when they return, it’ll be to headline proper. The only constant in what is a wonderfully varied set is that they sound absolutely massive; they have all bases covered, including scintillating punk (‘Yuk Foo’, ‘Play the Greatest Hits’), lighter-waving anthems (‘How Can I Make It OK?’, ‘The Last Man on Earth’) and audacious art rock (‘Bloom Baby Bloom’, ‘Giant Peach’). On tonight's evidence, they’re clearly more than ready for their scheduled arena shows later this year, and they feel like a perfect note to end on - a forward-thinking band for a forward-thinking festival.

Tags: FKA twigs, Linkin Park, Nine Inch Nails, Wolf Alice, Open’er, Festivals, Reviews, Live Reviews