Show Review: Highlights of Aftershock 2025!

Review by:
Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro and Emily Anderson @emilyphotoadventure

Photos by:
Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro unless otherwise stated

Nearly one year ago, at the very end of Spinning Platters’ Aftershock 2024 review, this question was raised: “West Coast’s Biggest Rock Festival had such a stellar lineup this year, HOW are they possibly going to outdo themselves in 2025?!?!” 

If one hundred people were asked if 2025 was better than 2024, there would undoubtedly be one hundred different answers and opinions. Aftershock 2024 was so exceptionally good and a heavy metal fan’s wet dream – Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Slayer, Pantera, Slipknot, Mastodon, Anthrax, Clutch, Ministry, Body Count and more! Fans of other genres of rock, punk, and loud music were still out in force, as Aftershock 2024 set an attendance record of 40,000 people per day, but may have felt neglected by the sheer amount of metal that closed every night of the festival.

For the 13th annual Aftershock in 2025, promoter Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP) altered the overall lineup to cater to the rest of those fans while still appealing to the heavy metal fans, by combining every Warped TourOzzfest and Rockstar Mayhem Festival lineup, put it all in a blender, and poured it in a tall glass of Discovery Park for four days of the best rock, alt-rock, metal, 2000’s nu-metal, hardcore, and pop-punk bands, all in one place at one time in the outskirts of downtown Sacramento!  

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April \m/etal show photos + reviews: Obituary, Exodus, Death Angel, and more!

Photo Galleries and Show Reviews by: Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro

Spinning Platters attended, photographed, and reviewed (not all) a dozen \m/etal shows in April! Beginning the last weekend of March and throughout April, San Francisco (and Spinning Platters!) had become very \m/etal!  Just look at the list of 60+ band names on the left column (on mobile, look near the bottom of the page), which does not happen very often around here anymore…

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Kerry King (of Slayer) ‘From Hell I Rise’

Review by: Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro
Cover photo by: Jim Louvau @jimlouvau

“It’s gonna sound like Slayer without it being Slayer.” (Paul Bostaph, August 27, 2020, Metal Injection

“[O]f course it’s gonna sound like Slayer; I wrote 90% of the last record [Repentless].” (Kerry King, May 13, 2024, Revolver)

After an eighteen-month ‘final’ tour, Slayer called it quits on November 30, 2019, and it surprised absolutely no one that Kerry King would be back. Even the guitar picks that he threw out from the stage every night on the final tour said: Kerry King will be “Reborn” in “2020”.  

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Show Review: Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem, Shoreline Amphitheater, June 30, 2013

Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro

Mountain View. California. Sunny. 82°.

With every meteorologist proclaiming the apocalypse across the West Coast, it was not as miserably hot as was expected. Yet with the arrival of the first band of the annual Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, the heat (and volume) was definitely turning up, and for the duration of the day, more than a baker’s dozen worth of bands played across four stages, culminating with the sun setting just in time for Rob Zombie to heat it up again with plenty of fire and pyro!

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Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 11/22/12-11/28/12

Henry Rollins opted to spend Thanksgiving at a much better restaurant this year.

Did you really think I’d live you hanging on Thanksgiving day? Of course not… If Henry Rollins is working on Thanksgiving, then I am, too!

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