Words by: Remy Naveed
Photos by: Emma Austin (@emshootsbands)
You could tell who the crowd at Victoria Park were here for long before Twenty One Pilots took the stage. Painted hands and necks appeared throughout the field; coloured tape was wrapped around jeans and jackets, and some wore full costumes dedicated to the band’s long-term lore. This scene was quickly understood as a celebration of a carefully-built storyline that has stuck with fans over the years.
We spoke to one gig-goer, who had spent almost a decade following Twenty One Pilots’ narrative universe and was more than happy to break it down. She explained how Dema, the fictional city at the centre of the story, is controlled by nine bishops, with protagonist Clancy repeatedly trying to escape before eventually returning to fight back alongside rebel group, the Banditos. Beneath it all is a story rooted in real struggle, with the wider mythology intertwined with themes of mental health and insecurity, while Nico sits at the heart of the conflict as an antagonist. With the band scheduled for an unusually long two-hour set, the fan was already theorising about what the extra time might mean. For her, this day had become more than just enjoying a headline set, but rather waiting for the chance for a new chapter to unfold.
That level of investment was impressive, but it wasn’t unique to the headliners. On the X Stage, Leicester-based Mouth Culture brought back the kind of sound that once lived permanently in my headphones. Their screaming vocals and emo-rock urgency immediately recalled the bands I listened to growing up, but there was nothing dated about the performance. Despite the early hour, the crowd was already throwing itself into mosh pits, with crowd surfers coming over the barrier one after another until even security looked visibly stressed.
The band seemed just as taken aback by the response. They repeatedly stopped to thank the crowd before bringing out You Me at Six guitarist Max Helyer to debut an unreleased collaborative track. Helyer leapt across the stage waving a Mouth Culture flag before heading straight towards the barrier; the event felt like the passing of a torch between one generation of guitar music to the next.
Where Mouth Culture pulled the sounds of the past into the present, Nova Twins offered a glimpse into where heavy music could go next. In the packed North Stage tent where Amy Love and Georgia South took their positions alongside live drummer Luke Campbell, the air was thick with heat. Instead of relying on standard backing tracks, South weaponised her pedalboard and sent distorted frequencies rattling through the tent poles while Love tore through a series of guitar riffs. During ‘Taxi’, the crowd responded not only with headbanging, but by splitting the middle of the tent wide open for a pit that swallowed half the room.
Watching Love and South command the heavy crowd with total confidence and attitude was something to witness. As someone who rarely saw anyone who wasn’t white dominating a stage growing up, it genuinely moved me. Security once again struggled to guide crowd surfers back down as the pressure kept building to the roof, turning a tent slot into one of the most physically intense sets of the afternoon. Catching yourself in the midst of it all felt like catching a band right at the precipice of something massive.
As the afternoon turned towards evening, the festival began to feel increasingly like a pilgrimage to something people had loved for years. Twenty One Pilots entered the East Stage to a field that had been filling steadily throughout the day. The two-hour set gave fans plenty to obsess over. Their track ‘Robot Voices’ was debuted live – with Emi Grace joining on guitar – folding into a snippet of The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’.
Out in the middle of the field, a B stage was built around a burning car. Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun cut through the crowd to reach it, high fiving fans along the barricades. On the way back, Tyler sang ‘Chlorine’ whilst putting on a pair of bedazzled sunglasses made by a fan. It was enough to make my fourteen-year-old self very happy.
Back on the main stage, Josh Dun appeared as the Torchbearer, carrying the fan-signed London flag towards the stage before the band tore into a run that leaned hard on nostalgia: ‘Jumpsuit’, ‘Nico and the Niners’, ‘Heavydirtysoul’; each one hitting harder than the last. Emotion spilled over onto the big screens as fans wept while singing every word.
Acknowledging the day’s earlier acts on stage, the duo ensured their set felt like a celebration of emerging music. The emotional high point came with ‘Drag Path’, which has recently found a new audience on TikTok. As the song reached its final chorus, rain began to fall over Victoria Park with almost scripted timing.
The celebration of the duo proved impossible to ignore even for those on duty. During ‘Ride’ a security guard (later identified as Lucas) temporarily dropped his on-duty act to be pulled up onto the stage, belting out the final chorus word for word and causing one of the loudest reactions of the night.
The audience remained part of the production until the end. In keeping with band tradition, fans raised a platform in the middle of the audience to hold Tyler up towards the finale. Josh soon joined him, and the two finished the set floating above a sea of hands.
To me, All Points East initially felt like Download had been dropped into Victoria Park: guitars, screaming vocals, mosh pits and bodies flying over barriers before the sun had even set. But by the time Twenty One Pilots closed out the night, that initial chaos had taken on a different quality. What had started as a day of ear-splitting music and teenage nostalgia had become something much more communal. Somewhere along the way, it became a personal reminder that the music we find when we’re young doesn’t stay trapped in the past but grows up with us, and how wonderful it is that such a large group of people can come together to embrace that.
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