Show Review: The. Best. Aftershock. Ever.

Review and All Photos by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF 

For decades, Europe has led the way in the heavy metal and loud rock music festival space. Monsters of Rock (the originator, which started in 1980!), Wacken Open Air, Dynamo Open Air, Hellfest, Graspop, Copenhell, Rock am Ring, Rock im Park, Summer Breeze, Sweden Rock Fest and Download have always dominated the landscape with their amazing lineups year after year. 

United States was never close in offering an equivalent heavy metal experience. Sure, there was Ozzfest and Mayhem Festival, but those have been gone since 2017 and 2015 and Americans have always leaned more towards indie rock music festivals like Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonaroo, and Outside Lands anyway.

For the last twelve or so years, Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP) has been chipping away at the supremacy of the European heavy metal festivals, with Welcome To Rockville, Louder Than Life, Sonic Temple, Inkcarceration, Rock on the Range, Rocklahoma, Carolina Rebellion, and Northern California’s very own Aftershock Festival. With the best lineup it has ever had, West Coast’s Biggest Rock Festival definitely lived up to its name in 2024!

To plagiarize our own words from last year’s review, Discovery Park in Sacramento was once again the site for the annual Aftershock Festival, a four-day rock and metal music festival featuring five stages of bona fide heavy metal headliners with a supporting cast of so many of the best of today’s rock and metal bands.

For the Aftershock 2024 lineup, DWP really went way above and beyond, with top tier bands Slayer, Pantera, Slipknot, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Body Count, Five Finger Death Punch, Mötley Crüe, Disturbed, Mastodon, Falling in Reverse, Staind, Breaking Benjamin, and Seether. Filling in the middle of the poster was a stellar lineup of Anthrax, Shadows Fall, Fear Factory, Static X, Biohazard, Till Lindemann (of Rammstein), Lorna Shore, Whitechapel, Ministry, Cypress Hill, Sevendust, Rise Against, Rival Sons, Halestorm, Evanescence, Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, Clutch, Tom Morello and much more. 

Aftershock is also a bit of an endurance test. There are the crazy fans who run in as soon as the gates open and stand at the barricade for basically eleven hours, with no food or even the chance to leave to find a restroom (because they’ll never get their spot back). Security did hand out plenty of water up there though so that nobody passed out in the mid-80° heat! There are others who try to take in as much as possible by going from stage to stage to stage all day long to see as many bands as they can. Many just get drunk and sit around on their picnic blanket or at the VIP section tables, while others take it all in stride and hit up the multitude of food trucks, beer tents, alcohol and cannabis vendors.

Then there’s Spinning Platters. As members of a fairly sizable contingent of media onsite to cover all things Aftershock, our crack team of reporters hardly stopped at all for the entirety of their four days here. To assist the press as a whole, DWP provided a little spot in the back corner of the VIP section known as the Media Lounge. This lounge was also connected to a backstage Artist entrance, where many of the bands had an opportunity to enter and participate in interviews and photo ops.

Arriving on Thursday a couple hours after the gates opened for the first time this weekend, all of the south entrance wristband scanners were down. Not a good start to the festival! It didn’t take too much longer to get in and made it in time for half of Sevendust. After that, the rest of the day was the start of a weekend-long marathon of walking, walking and more walking. Cypress Hill was on next after Sevendust, then jetted over to the media lounge to take a picture of Halestorm and speak with Tony Campos (bass player) of Static X and Fear Factory, then down and around to DWPresents stage for Biohazard, back over to Jack Daniel’s (main stage) for Till Lindemann, then Pantera on the Shockwave (second main stage), to the furthest stage (Soundwave) for five minutes of Insane Clown Posse (whoop whoop), and back to main for Slayer.

Tony Campos of Static X and Fear Factory is a busy man. Last time he was spotted locally was in San Francisco on the first day of the Machine Head + Fear Factory tour at The Warfield (January 2024), which ended up being the only show he performed on. “I had to go back home because five days later I started the Static X Sevendust tour.” With Wayne‘s untimely death 10 years ago, and an abundance of “songs written from material that Wayne had left behind”, he has released two volumes of Project: Regeneration and has been able to successfully tour on that and the past catalog. Headlining one of the smaller stages, he said “this is my first time here [Aftershock]. I’ve never been here with any of the other bands I’ve ever played with” and this weekend he appeared twice (also Fear Factory). “Static is doing a quick South America tour at the end of this month, then I’m done for the year, then European festivals in summer next year.” Also, “Dino [Cazares] is working on a new Fear Factory record. He said I could play on it, so we’ll see if that works out, I’ve been begging him to let me play on a Fear Factory record for the last ten years!” [Dino played bass and guitar on the last three records dating back to 2012]  

Click below for Day One (Thursday) photos.

Friday definitely wins for having the most miles walked over a single day.  Starting at the south side again, this was the closest entrance for the Coors Light stage for British Lion, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden’s side project. Next stop was at main for Mexican female rock band The Warning, followed by some intel that Rise Against would be in the media lounge (yes, they were!). Success on a photo with the whole band, so right back to Coors for Taproot, up and over to second main for Architects, back to Coors and Soundwave for Bayside and Marky Ramone (featuring Tommy Victor of Prong), back up to second main for Rise Against, over to main for Evanescence, back to second main for Five Finger Death Punch, all the way back down to Coors for Mastodon, then finally back up to main for Slipknot… WHEW, good thing there was no more bands today!

Click below for Day Two (Friday) photos.

Saturday began in the media lounge with an interview with Edsel Dope, leader of the band Dope and the man allegedly behind the Xero mask in Static X. Edsel stated that he is “a huge Static X fan” and “was brought in as a creative director in 2019″ to help bring [Static] back as an effective connection to existing and new fans.” Dope filled the time slot previously held by Coal Chamber, as Dez Fafara is currently out with some health issues. Edsel was simply “honored that the community would consider Dope for [it].”

Following the chat, a one-two-three punch of Rival Sons, Dope, and Clutch on second main kept us from having to do any serious walking for a while, followed by Anthrax on main, over and down to DWPresents for the incredible Body Count, then up and back to second main for Judas Priest and over to main for the mighty Iron Maiden. Maiden went heavy on the new stuff, clocking in at five songs and nearly 37% of the full set, so those hoping to hear Number of the Beast, 2 Minutes to Midnight and Run to the Hills were solely disappointed.

Although it is astonishing to see both Iron Maiden and Judas Priest in the same evening, their shows are very well produced and don’t really change from one night to the next. On the other hand, Ice-T and Body Count was Merciless, raw and unpredictable, and was easily the set of the day and perhaps the entire weekend. After kicking things off with his cover of Slayer’s Raining Blood, Ice held absolutely nothing back, from the first verse of There Goes the Neighborhood, to Manslaughter, Psychopath, to having his 9-yr old daughter introduce Talk Shit, Get Shot, and of course Cop Killer. The set took a 180° turn from the killing fields and finished with his take on Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.

Click below for Day Three (Saturday) photos.

If it wasn’t for Shadows Fall’s appearance being their first and only California show in the past dozen years, alongside Fear Factory’s great set, there was a reasonable possibility that the tired and tinnitus-bound Spinning Platters was going to skip out on the final day of Aftershock. It turned out to be a good day after all to stay until the end, with plenty more walking around between all stages to take in a bit of Hed PE, Powerman 5000, Eagles of Death Metal, Jinjer, and Touche Amore, prior to the surprising Shadows Fall and Fear Factory sets. Flogging Molly was unfortunately missed for Disturbed due to their stage manager having us up on the side stage Friends + Family area.  

The final set of the weekend sounded great musically, but due to the vocals, it could have easily been skipped over. Mötley Crüe really needs to get singer Vince Neil‘s mumbling his way through the set under control. It’s been this way for so many years now. He sings (mumbles) every third word of every song. Certainly, his teleprompter has ALL the words written down??  It’s not difficult to remember that “at the” comes between “Shout” and “Devil”. John 5 is a wonderful guitar player and can run rings around his fellow bandmates up there. Tommy Lee is also an awesome drummer, but he also can’t seem to leave his DJ persona at home and just be a heavy metal drummer. Stop looking for boobies and calling us bitches… save that for your hip-hop and dubstep fans who would probably appreciate it more.

Click below for Day Four (Sunday) photos.

All in all, Aftershock Festival is and always will be a weekend to remember! West Coast’s Biggest Rock Festival had such a stellar lineup this year, HOW are they possibly going to outdo themselves in 2025?!?!