Summer of Loud Brings the Fire to Pine Knob
Summer of Loud hit Pine Knob Music Theatre in a thunderous roar on July 16, 2025 with a stacked lineup featuring 8 bands from the Rock and Metal variety, which included heavy hitters Parkway Drive, Killswitch Engage, Beartooth, and hometown heroes and headliners I Prevail.
The tour’s website and corresponding photo passes also had an inscription: THIS TOUR IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF DAVE SHAPIRO – EMMA HUKE – KENDALL FORTNER.
PARKWAY DRIVE
Parkway Drive puts on a hell of a show. This was a new band for us, so we weren’t entirely sure what to expect, but once we got there, we were along for the ride. The first 3 tracks to rock the set included “Glitch,” “Prey,” and “Sleepwalker,” while the band closed out the set with “Wild Eyes” and “Crushed.”
KILLSWITCH ENGAGE
Killswitch Engage was on Upheaval Festival 2024, so we had a better idea of what we could expect from these guys, aka some face-melting riffs, lots of pyro, and fan interaction with the band’s frontman, Jesse Leach.
We made a particular beeline for capturing the lyrics and title of one of Killswitch Engage’s songs, “I Am Broken Too,” which the band unfortunately didn’t play, tattooed on Leach’s arm, which has got to be one of the coolest tattoos in Rock. As he raises his mic hand to vocalize, the tattoo becomes ultra-prominent, and as someone who understands the sentiment, it is both impactful and artistic.
Killswitch Engage has a killer catalog, so they played some of the favorites for this 12-song block, including “This Fire,” “Hate By Design,” “My Curse,” and of course, their Dio “Holy Diver” cover (which was our gateway to this band, by the way). At one point, Leach ran through the stands to sing to fans in the pavilion, while Pete Cortese is practically about to get his hair burnt off by the wicked pyro, and Adam Dutkiewicz is being… well… Adam Dutkiewicz (we mean that in a loving way).
BEARTOOTH
To sort of quote Jesea Lee‘s social post a few days after our set, Caleb Shomo had on a shirt, and we were shook. Just kidding! Beartooth took the stage with an inflatable snake, lots of pyro, and the frontman bringing back crop tops, one show at a time. But enough of that!
Beartooth is another Upheaval Festival alum, and they were so captivating that time that I ended up missing another band’s set because I was so enthralled. This time, with the photographer cap of 3 songs and out, I was able to capture moments in their songs “The Lines,” “The Past Is Dead,” and “Sunshine!”
The band also powered through a 12-song set, which included fan favorites like “In Between,” “I Was Alive,” “Might Love Myself,” and the set closer, “In Between.”
I PREVAIL
And finally, our headliners and heroes, I Prevail. Story time: My first *official* photo pass? I Prevail at The Crofoot. The “Blank Space” Taylor Swift cover had just come out, and we were immediately obsessing over these Michiganders who were blowing up. The lineup has changed over the years. The band member I interviewed back then departed, there have been some shuffles of other members over the years, and within the most recent, Brian Burkheiser.
I’ll admit: this news rocked me. Out of everyone in the band, Brian Burkheiser and current lead singer/screamer Eric Vanlerberghe were important as equals in my mind. Maybe it’s the old head in me, but the news jolted me enough to comment on their Instagram page, which, at the time, were my true feelings: It was hard to look at I Prevail as the same band without Brian. It felt like a yin-yang situation: one doesn’t work without the other. Maybe light and dark side, if you’re a ‘Star Wars’ nerd about it. I got chewed out. People I knew, people I didn’t know. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but maybe it was unfair, especially since I’ve seen this from the jump. I was in the photo pit at the Crofoot, Royal Oak Music Theatre, and Fillmore shows on their legendary rise. Maybe I had an attachment to what I knew.
But fuck it. This was not about me, it isn’t about me, and more to the point, I was wrong, and I’m putting it in print. While I felt like the fans were going to lose something with Brian’s departure, much like other bands that have had to make lineup shifts, things evolve. More importantly, things change, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In this particular instance, though? Am I comfortable saying it’s better? Not necessarily. But what I will say? IT WORKS. Very well, I might add.
Setting aside the nostalgia factor, I Prevail plummeted through an 11-track set, showcasing that the band’s core is still there, even if Burkheiser isn’t. Eric Vanlerberghe holds it down, along with help from guitarist Dylan Bowman. It’s not that I forgot that Brian was the OG, or that I forgot he existed, but at the same time, the band has made such strides to move forward with this recent change, that for a moment, and no disrespect to Brian… it didn’t matter.
I Prevail has still got it. They never lost it, frankly. But like many situations where a band lineup changes, we get stuck in the nostalgic factor of it all. What we know has been the subject of many things, not just this band, and sometimes we hold on too tightly and make snap decisions. But I gladly will eat my Doc Martens for that.
“Bow Down,” “Body Bag,” and “Self-Destruction” ignited the set with an intense stage presence. Their new single, “Violent Nature,” came after the press was vacated from the pit, but echoed from all corners of Pine Knob, almost breaking the elephant-in-the-room bubble to those of us who were still holding onto the past. Yet, when “Blank Space” rose to its occasion, we found acceptance. Truly, we have to remember that people are human, both us and these bands. And we’re willing to be human with them, in the safest place we can be: the mosh pit.