Twenty One Pilots headline Sziget Festival day two with a White Stripes cover

Twenty One Pilots headlined the second day of Sziget Festival in Budapest, closing their 20-song set with a cover of The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army," NME reported on August 13. Before the song, a pre-recorded message from White Stripes frontman Jack White played on the big screens: "I'm Jack White, and I give Tyler and Josh permission to do this." Singer Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun then led the crowd through a mass sing-along of the riff, with Joseph telling the crowd afterward, "if you would have us back, we'd love to come back."

The set, opening with "Overcompensate" and drawing across the duo's catalog, was built around the band's usual theatrics: pyrotechnics, a torch-lighting moment after "Tear In My Heart" that NME compared to an Olympic ceremony, fire bursting across the stage during "Jumpsuit," and Dun's climb to a second drum kit on a tower above the crowd for "Drum Show." Joseph later climbed a smaller structure of his own for "Ride," before the pair closed with "Stressed Out" and "Trees."

Ashnikko played the Revolut Stage the same night, opening a set NME's review called an immersive, Alice in Wonderland-style spectacle: the singer climbed onto the stage through a tiny door, telling the crowd, "if you don't know, my name is Ashnikko and I'm gonna put a little performance on for you tonight," before moving through songs including "Microplastics" and "Chokehold Cherry Python" with two dancers and heavy choreography.

NME's review also singled out Biffy Clyro's early evening set, which frontman Simon Neil punctuated by repeatedly shouting the band's name to the crowd, mixing mosh-ready anthems with more emotional songs like "Black Chandelier" and "Many Of Horror." Chemical Brothers member Tom Rowlands, who said he first discovered Norwegian singer Aurora after seeing her 2016 Glastonbury set on television, joined her as TOMORA for what NME called an apocalyptic rave-up interspersed with moments of quiet beauty. LA industrial rockers HEALTH closed out the write-up with a pulverizing set of spooky synths and grinding guitar.

The festival, held on Budapest's Island of Freedom, continued the next day with a headline set from Florence + The Machine, alongside Lewis Capaldi, Fcukers, Parcels, Loyle Carner and Richie Hawtin. Sziget Festival sits within rock and the festival tracker on MusicSuey, alongside MusicSuey's coverage of Twenty One Pilots asking fans for their own festival footage at a separate date.