Rogues Hollow ramps up for heavy metal in 2025

While plenty of creative revelations have come to Rogues Hollow Regiment’s designers throughout the offseason, one thing became especially apparent following the selection of the corps’ show theme for 2025.

With a production title of “ToXic,” there are certain requirements.

“We can't do a show called “ToXic” without Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic,’” Rogues Hollow Regiment program coordinator Angelo Kortyka said. 

Rogues Hollow Regiment publicly introduced the title of its 2025 production just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. 

Last year’s third-place finisher in All-Age Open Class competition, the Ohio-based corps plans to dive into the darker things that can often take rule over the psyche.

“The show is about those negative feelings and emotions and behaviors that we all have within us,” Kortyka said, “and how we manage those, and how they manifest.”

According to Kortyka, Rogues Hollow designers have typically developed the thematic elements of the program before laying out the musical repertoire. A reversed approach this year, however, yielded exciting ideas.

“Our corps director is a child of the 1980s,” Kortyka said. “He grew up in the 1990s and grew up listening to a lot of grunge and heavy metal. So, the kernel of inspiration came from him really wanting to put some heavy metal tunes on the field.”

As designers noted, aside from the Britney Spears tune, much of the repertoire for Rogues Hollow Regiment’s program will be derived from heavy metal music. This comes a year after multiple classic rock songs appeared in the corps’ repertoire; 2024 included The Doors and Jimi Hendrix, and featured a memorable electric guitar soloist. 

In 2025, the likes of “Hurt” and “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails, “Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson, and Manson’s cover of “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, will be featured throughout the program.

Kortyka also noted that Spears’ “Toxic” will be melded seamlessly into the metal genre; the corps’ opener features a combination of “Toxic” and “Tainted Love.”

“(Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’) is definitely a huge part of the opener, and we've discussed using motifs from it throughout the show,” Kortyka said. “That's a very different tune from heavy metal and the inspiration for the show. But I think that's part of the fun.”

Drum corps fans may also recognize “Hurt” from an array of recent drum corps productions, including 2019 Blue Knights, 2019 Crossmen and 2018 Spirit of Atlanta.

 

“We're trying to put a new spin on it that I think will hit a little differently,” Kortyka added. 

According to its designers, Rogues Hollow Regiment hasn’t gotten too far down the path of 2025’s visual design, but does have some concepts in place.

For one, 2025 marks the corps’ 10th anniversary — hence the emphasis on the ‘X’ in its show title. In that vein, the Roman numeral “X” will be utilized in various forms throughout the production.

“We're going to do backdrops,” Rogues Hollow Regiment visual designer Carl Diefenbach said about how the corps will set the stage in 2025. “I think the word ‘toxic’ is going to be in the back to help us. Plus, it’s the corps’ 10th anniversary, so we wanted to make sure we'd be able to find something that we could intertwine between toxic and the 10th anniversary, which leads us to a bunch of X’s.”

Kortyka also mentioned the use of color as a key motif.

“When you think of toxic, you think of those ‘chemical’ colors,” he said, referencing the fluorescent greens, reds and yellows featured in the corps’ show reveal graphics. “The characterization of the corps throughout the show is going to change, so we're going to utilize those colors in some ways to kind of show that change visually — that internal change presented externally through color.”

And while ideas continue to come together as “ToXic” becomes a reality, the excitement rapidly builds toward Rogues Hollow’s 10th-anniversary season. 

“The corps plays really well,” Diefenbach said. “We've been getting a lot of good talent in, and I think that's going to be really helpful.”

View Rogues Hollow Regiment's 2025 Tour Schedule