Sunday at Aftershock is always a sad day, but not for a lack of quality sets. It’s a sad day because we know the weekend will end soon. But we smile through the pain, and we enjoy every last second of it. To finish the festival, here’s a few performances we caught that we think you would enjoy too.
Old school headbangers came to party with Machine Head. Every dirty guitar riff was met with cheering and crowd surfing. More than that, each lyric was a call to action to support our fellow rocker, “Is there anybody out there?” Robb Flynn encouraged the fans there, “Look to those around you, those are the ones to help you up. Because we’re the outsiders, we’re the ones who don’t belong, and this is exactly where you need to be!”
An eccentric and emotional experience, Mudvayne lit up the stage with colorful face paint and powerful words. Between raucous gritty songs, vocalist Chad Gray told the crowd, “We always look after one another because we are family… I’ve had a lot of hurt and pain in my life and music helped me find my place.” I can’t remember the last time I’ve been encouraged this much at a metal show.
Always provocative and graphic, this performance from GWAR was no different. Other than their ridiculously gaudy outfits, spewing viscera, and raunchy heavy metal jams, it’s always fun to see who they’ll be beheading and disemboweling this time. Their targets this time were the current US president and a superstar musician, but they’ve pretty much gruesomely murdered every prominent figure since the 80s in their quest to take over the world of humans. Any chance you have to see GWAR perform live, take it.
Flyleaf gave us a deeply personal performance in which Lacey Sturm connected with the audience on a new level. At several points during the show, she crumpled up pieces of paper and threw them to people in the crowd, seemingly with messages on them for her fans. Lacey asked how many people here tonight thought they weren’t going to be alive today at one point. She assured them that “sometimes it’s going through those things that makes you realize that this is a gift. Another day IS a gift. And we’re all here together because of that gift. And I’m thankful to be with you. And sometimes it takes going through those things for us to realize what it means to be Fully Alive.” This led right into the song Fully Alive, of course. They even played You Make It All Go Away, a deep track that’s not on streaming platforms, rarely seen performed. There wasn’t a single dry eye out there by the time they were done.
The big finisher of weekend, Bring Me the Horizon brought down the house in incredible style. The entire thing was framed with N64 style animations, gameplay footage of what looked like Resident Evil, a whole storyline involving computer viruses and Youtopia, and that was all before they even finished the first song. The stage evolved and changed as the storyline moved along, and each song was narratively connected. At one point, Oli chose a fan from the crowd to bring up on stage, Oscar, and he sang one of the songs himself, with a karaoke Guitar Hero style game on the screen. Everyone enthralled by the story, cheered at points when they could tell that their favorite song would be next. Uniquely entertaining and fun, we didn’t want this show to ever end.
That’s it. Aftershock 2025 has concluded, and we’re still reeling. The blisters, the Aftershock flu, the back pain… it was all worth it. So then, the countdown to Aftershock 2026 officially starts now. Will you be there with us?
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