Mad With Power 2025: Friday
Good to see you again, Wisconsin!
I know it’s been a minute, but coming back to your cheese-tastic state to attend this year’s Mad With Power was worth the road trip.
This was my first time attending this Festival as well as The Sylvee in general.
Before hoppin’ into my little review, I just wanted to say thank you to the amazing staff at The Sylvee. Especially to the security staff who got assigned to the pit area.
I stopped counting crowd surfers after 10. But if things go well and there is a 2026 MWP I will be sure to bring a notebook with me and take proper count of how many I see, and which band had the most - because that’s the kind of data I like to get and surely someone else on the internet agrees.
Also thank you to the ones who were stationed by vendor Druid Nocturna. You were all very kind during interactions and helped keep an eye on all of the things and it was appreciated.
Now for Mad With Power!
Since this was a two day event, I’m only going to be talking about day one [Friday] things here. Final overview will be on day two’s post.
After an eventful drive from Detroit to Madison and checking into our hotel, my friend and I got ready to go to the kick off party at Aftershock Classic Arcade.
Over all it was fun, but very toasty. There were plenty of arcade games and pinball to be played, I just happen to not be great at them [I did try a jousting one though!]. But I did find skee-ball in one of the corners and spent most of my quarters there. It was nice to put some names and faces together, and watch other people play games [and play them well!]
When we got to The Sylvee on Friday afternoon it was like walking into an anime convention where the main stage and game room merged into one multilevel treat. Everywhere you looked there was some sort of arcade game to play, or one of the band’s merch tables. There were so many game options and that was just on level one. Upstairs there were computer options, including a typing one with zombies as a premise. Could you imagine having to play that as a method to learn the keyboard layout?
If you’ve been following Mad With Power for awhile then you are aware that there were some problems with the visa situations for multiple bands. This resulted in them having to find replacement ones, and even then one of the replacements had to withdraw shortly after they were announced. Fret not though because everyone who played was great. I’m challenging myself to do a one word description for each band based off of their set. They’ll be above their photo sets here in the italics.
[ show poster from Mad With Power facebook page ]
Enough words - it’s picture time!
Firewind
legendary
Nanowar of Steel
energetic
The Dread Crew of Oddwood
crabtastic
[listen, I wanted to make Giant Fucking Demon Crab reference]
Mega Colossus
unexpected
[ Mega Colossus was one of the bands who got added last minute, so I was not as familiar with their music compared to everyone else’s. So I was pleasantly surprised ]
Oryad
whimsy
Brian Koenig
ecstatic
[ In addition to being a member of Lords of the Trident, Brian does his own thing for Brian Koenig Music. He was also a very last minute addition to the lineup but I’m so happy to have seen his solo set ]
