The Rock 2000 Live – Spark Arena, 25 September 2026: Review & Photo Galleries

Aaron Gascoigne and Photos by Leonie Moreland

26th September 2026

There are concerts, there are festivals, there are countdowns, and then there is The Rock 2000 Live. What started life as a radio countdown has become something significantly bigger: part gig, part pilgrimage, part reunion and, for thousands of black-T-shirt-wearing disciples, something approaching a religious festival. Doors opened at 3pm, Jay and Dunc took the stage for the Top 20 from 4pm, number one arrived just before 7pm and then came The Boondocks, Villainy, Devilskin and Australian headliners The Living End. That’s a serious day at the office for even the most hardened rock fan.

I’ve spent enough time on stages, beside them and behind them to appreciate the stuff an audience isn’t supposed to notice, and before getting anywhere near the music, this needs to be said: The Rock 2000 is one of the best-organised music events in this country. From production, sound and lighting through to the backstage operation, artist management and even the catering, it was bloody faultless.

When something this big runs this smoothly, it’s because a huge number of people have done their jobs exceptionally well. Brad King and his team deserve enormous credit, as do Jay and Dunc, the production crews and the entire Rock family. And then there was Roger Farrelly, taking his final Rock 2000 bow. After being part of The Rock furniture for so long, his final swansong deserved a night like this.

By the time Limp Bizkit landed at number three, Spark Arena had gone completely ballistic. Horns in the air everywhere, lasers carving through the arena, cameras flying above the crowd, a massive LED screen dominating the rear of the stage and enough marijuana floating through the building to suggest several people had taken a fairly liberal interpretation of the evening’s catering options.

The visual production was extraordinary. Whoever directed that side of the show deserves their own round of applause. Full multi-camera production, lasers, screens and lighting all working together, yet never getting in the way of the reason everyone was there: the music.

Look around the arena and you also realised just how wonderfully broad the church of rock has become. Grandads, mums, dads, teenagers, mullets, people who looked like they’d just left the office and an absolute ocean of black T-shirts. At one point Queen comes across the system, then The Proclaimers, and thousands of supposedly hard-arse rock fans know every bloody word. Of course they do. That’s part of what makes this event work. There aren’t too many places where generations separated by 30 or 40 years can stand beside each other and scream exactly the same lyric at exactly the same moment.

As the countdown reached its pointy end, Jay and Dunc were joined by Roger Farrelly. Twenty days earlier there had been 2,000 songs. Now there were two. At number two came System of a Down‘s Chop Suey!, and Spark Arena erupted again. One of the smartest production touches of the entire event was putting the lyrics above the main stage, because everywhere you looked people were screaming every word together. Spark Arena had effectively become New Zealand’s biggest, loudest and probably least sober karaoke bar.

Blindspott

Then came number one.

Blindspott – Nil By Mouth.

Confetti exploded, Spark Arena went nuts and New Zealand rock history had just been made. Blindspott became the first Kiwi act to take the top spot in the more than 20-year history of The Rock 2000. Nil By Mouth had been knocking on the door for years — reaching number two in 2024 and number three last year — but in 2026 it finally got there.

I had the privilege of catching up with the Blindspott boys backstage after their one-off performance, and what I discovered made the moment even better. As they told it to me, they had gone into the day believing they were there to play their new single outside the arena as a “special” performance.

Then, with only hours to spare, they were told voting had closed and they had secured number one. Suddenly the plan had changed somewhat. Instead of playing outside, Blindspott were walking onto the Spark Arena stage to perform the number-one song in The Rock 2000 for 2026. One song, one enormous Kiwi moment and one hell of a cameo.

The Boondocks

Following that was never going to be easy, but The Boondocks were thrown into that unenviable position. They’re a two-piece producing a sound considerably bigger than two people should reasonably be able to make, and this was their first time playing Spark Arena.

There is something wonderfully difficult to pigeonhole about them. They’re young, raw, bloody tight and clearly immensely appreciative of the opportunity they’d been given. The problem wasn’t really on stage; it was what had just happened before them. Blindspott had won the countdown, the confetti had fallen and a decent chunk of the audience understandably headed for the bars, toilets, cigarettes or whatever else had been sustaining them since mid-afternoon.

It briefly felt as though the emotional climax of the day had already happened, even though there were hours of live music still to come.

Villainy

Villainy walked out and the arena began filling again. These guys are such a bloody good Kiwi band. The set moved through Raised, Safe Passage, Demons, Cut, Dreams, Miles Away, Another Time, Alligator and Happy Waste, and what struck me most was just how tight the whole thing was.

Great vocals, seriously good playing and some fantastic harmonies. There is a precision to Villainy live that can get hidden underneath the sheer weight of their sound, but listen properly and there is some beautiful musicianship happening in there.

The harmonies in particular were outstanding. They’re one of those acts who don’t appear intimidated by the size of an arena; if anything, they seem to expand into it.

Devilskin

Devilskin entered the stage, and holy hell, did they come to work. The visuals behind the band were superb, but you almost didn’t need them because Jennie Skulander was on fire. She has that rare ability to sound like an angel singing in a cathedral one moment and a demonic devil the next, without either feeling forced.

Her vocals were simply off the chart. Around her, the band was working its collective backside off. Paul Martin and Nic Martin were brutally tight in the engine room while Nail was absolutely slamming it on guitar, the four of them sounding enormous inside Spark Arena.

Their set ran through Little Pills, Swelter, Pray, Endo, Corrode, Grave, Start A Revolution, Voices, Barracuda and finally Violation. By the latter stages, sweat was pouring off Paul, Nail and Nic. I’ve seen plenty of hardworking bands, but Devilskin must be somewhere near the top of the list.

Jennie somehow remained composed out front while the machinery behind her looked like it had been operating at redline for an hour. Then Violation arrived, Jennie wound the crowd up one final time, the strobes went berserk and Devilskin emptied whatever was left in the tank. It was an enormous finish.

There was another number from the night that deserves mentioning: 22. Talking with Paul Martin after the performance, we discussed Devilskin landing 22 songs in this year’s Rock 2000. As Paul pointed out, that’s around 30 percent of their catalogue. Think about that for a moment. In a countdown containing 2,000 songs drawn from decades of rock music, roughly a third of one Kiwi band’s catalogue gets voted in.

Whatever way you cut it, that’s an incredible achievement and a pretty emphatic indication of the relationship Devilskin have built with New Zealand rock audiences. Huge congratulations to them.

The Living End

By the time The Living End arrived, we’d already had hours of music, a historic Kiwi number one, three local bands and enough noise to rearrange internal organs. Then three Australians wandered onto the stage and reminded everyone that you don’t need six or seven people to make an absolutely enormous racket. Watching them work makes the word “three-piece” seem faintly ridiculous.

My immediate reaction was the double bass. Look at that bloody thing. Then watch what happens to it. Scott Owen doesn’t so much stand behind a double bass as wrestle it into submission: spinning it, climbing onto it, throwing himself around it and, somehow, continuing to play the thing throughout.

Chris Cheney, meanwhile, is standing there with an old Gretsch producing that unmistakable combination of punk, rockabilly and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll while Andy Strachan holds the entire operation together behind them. My note at the time probably described them better than anything I could invent afterwards: old-school Aussie rock meets English punk culture meets Fonzie meets the Stray Cats.

The front-of-house mix was superb. Absolutely superb. Everything had its place and you could hear all three musicians clearly, which matters with a band like this because there is nowhere to hide. Their set moved through Roll On, Second Solution, Pictures In The Mirror, How Do We Know, Strange Place, Raise The Alarm, West End Riot, All Torn Down, Alfie, E-Boogie, White Noise and finally Prisoner Of Society.

At other points Cheney’s guitar playing went somewhere completely different — beautiful, articulate figures that had me thinking Mark Knopfler rather than punk rock. That’s one of the great things about The Living End: just when you think you’ve got them neatly filed away, they remind you how bloody good they actually are as musicians.

Alfie gave us one of the more human moments of the night. Cheney explained the story behind the song and asked for some audience participation, pointing out that he’d already been listening to us sing at the top of our lungs for the previous seven hours, so surely we could manage one word: Alfie. He called, Spark Arena answered, rehearsal completed, and suddenly thousands of people were part of the song.

Then came a VB held proudly aloft, the predictable middle fingers from sections of the Kiwi crowd and some quality trans-Tasman shit-stirring. Apparently some idiot from Victoria drinking VB and playing his stupid country-and-western music wasn’t sufficiently rock for The Rock 2000. Don’t worry, he had us covered. Cue AC/DC. Bloody Australians.

There was, however, something strange happening around them. By about five to ten, a substantial part of the audience had gone. Here was a world-class live band absolutely ripping through a set, yet the arena that had been packed earlier was visibly thinning. Those who stayed were rewarded. White Noise was massive, and when they finally dropped into Prisoner Of Society, it was exactly the ending the night deserved: fast, loud, tight and utterly unapologetic. “You guys fucking rule,” came the appreciation from the stage. Right back at you. What a way to finish.

And that’s ultimately what makes The Rock 2000 work. The countdown provides the framework, but this has become something much bigger: a meeting place for generations of New Zealand rock fans. A teenager can stand beside somebody who bought AC/DC on vinyl the first time around.

A young two-piece can walk onto Spark Arena for the first time. Villainy can remind us how much world-class music sits in our own backyard. Devilskin can put 22 songs into the countdown. Blindspott can arrive expecting to play outside and discover they’ve just become the first New Zealand band to win the bloody thing. Then three Australians can stroll out at the end and remind everyone just how devastating three great musicians can be.

If I have one criticism, it’s probably contained in that last word: day. It’s a bloody long one. The doors opened at 3pm, the Top 20 began at 4pm, number one came just before 7pm and the live programme was scheduled to continue until around 10.30pm.

There were plenty of people who had clearly been “preparing” well before they came through the doors, and while the crowd was reasonably well behaved overall, there were also a lot of people absolutely steamed remarkably early in proceedings. Starting an arena rock event in the middle of the afternoon and asking the same crowd to still be firing seven hours later is a big ask.

Against everything else, though, that’s a relatively small criticism. Brad King and his team, Jay and Dunc, the sound engineers, lighting and visual crews, camera operators, backstage staff, catering teams, security, artists and everyone else wearing a Rock pass who made this enormous piece of machinery work: take a bow. The audience sees the stage; those fortunate enough to get behind it see just how many people it takes to make that stage look effortless. This was an extraordinarily slick operation and, for me, one of the best-run music events in New Zealand.

And finally, Rog. Roger Farrelly’s last Rock 2000. After all those years, all those songs, all those arguments over what should have been higher and all those listeners who have had The Rock as part of the soundtrack to their lives, there was something fitting about his final one ending like this: a Kiwi band finally at number one, Spark Arena packed with rock fans spanning generations, confetti in the air and some of the country’s best musicians on the stage.