Outstanding!!! Guns N’ Roses Kick off 2025 World Tour, Unveil New Drummer ‘Isaac Carpenter’ As Axl Rose and co. will be playing across Asia and Europe for the next three months..

Outstanding!!! Guns N’ Roses Kick off 2025 World Tour, Unveil New Drummer ‘Isaac Carpenter’ As Axl Rose and co. will be playing across Asia and Europe for the next three months

Watch Guns N’ Roses Kick off 2025 World Tour, Unveil New Drummer

The show opened up with “Welcome to the Jungle” for the first time since 2012, and was the public’s first look at new band member Isaac Carpenter

 

By Andy Greene

Guns N’ Roses kicked off their 2025 Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things Tour Thursday evening at Songdo Moonlight Festival Park in Incheon, South Korea. The setlist will be similar to anyone who has seen GN’R during the reunion era, but it was the first time they’d opened a show with “Welcome to the Jungle” since Slash and Duff McKagan re-joined the band in 2016. More importantly, it was also their first appearance with new drummer Isaac Carpenter. He replaced longtime drummer Frank Ferrer earlier this year for reasons that were never publicly explained. “The outpouring of love I have felt from the incredible fans of Guns N’ Roses and my peers over the past 24 hours has been tremendous,” Ferrer wrote to fans in March. “I will have immense gratitude and love always for Axl and the band, while at the same time, disappointment that this chapter came to an end.” Carpenter, 45, played in a Guns N’ Roses cover band in high school called .22s and Tulips. In 2009, he joined McKagan’s side project Loaded, placing him in a position to live out his high school dreams once Guns parted ways with Ferrer. This is the first change in the Guns N’ Roses touring band lineup since the start of the reunion period in 2016. Carpenter is the band’s sixth drummer following Steven Adler, Matt Sorum, John Freese, Bryan “Brain” Mantia, and Ferrer. The tour continues May 5 at the K Arena in Yokohama, Japan. Unless more dates are added, it wraps up July 31 at the Wacken Open Air festival in Wacken, Germany. They’ll be joined along the way by Public Enemy, Rival Songs, and the Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter. Guns N’ Roses have released a series of singles over the past few years, including “Absurd, “Hard Skull,” Perhaps,” and “The General,” but they all date back to the Chinese Democracy sessions about two decades back. They have yet to release any songs written since Slash and McKagan came back. There has been talk of a new album, but no solid evidence that one is in the works.

Watch Guns N’ Roses play first show with new drummer Isaac Carpenter in South Korea

Axl Rose and co. will play across Asia and Europe for the next three months

Guns N’ Roses launched their world tour this week, playing their first show with new drummer Isaac Carpenter – see footage below.

The gig at Songdo Moonlight Festival Park in Icheon, South Korea took place on Thursday (May 1), the opening night of the ‘Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things’ tour.

It was Axl Rose and co.’s first show since November 2023 and the first since they parted ways “amicably” with drummer Frank Ferrer and replaced him with AWOLNATION’s Isaac Carpenter.

 

The new tour was announced in December, with dates to come across Europe and the Middle East later this summer – see the full list of dates here and find any remaining tickets here.

The 22-song set saw the band play music from across their storied career, from classic hits like ‘Welcome To The Jungle’, which opened for the first time since 2012, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and ‘November Rain’, to 2023 single ‘Perhaps’.

 

Watch fan-captured footage here: