Nu-metal's chaos agents in their beloved victory-lap era — Fred Durst does it all for the nookie, still, and the field does it with him.
From Jacksonville, FL · Sounds like Korn, Papa Roach, Staind, Kid Rock
Aftershock 2026 Lineup
Four days and 140-plus bands of rock, metal and hardcore on the Sacramento riverfront.
About Aftershock 2026
Aftershock is the West Coast's biggest rock festival: four October days at Discovery Park on the Sacramento riverfront, 142 bands, and a definition of "heavy" wide enough to be almost meaningless. Each night has its own personality in 2026 — My Chemical Romance's theatrics on Thursday, a Friday that hands the main stage to Limp Bizkit, Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill, Pierce The Veil over a deep post-hardcore reunion slate on Saturday, and Tool closing Sunday with Queens of the Stone Age, AFI, and Danny Elfman beneath them. Somewhere in the middle sit Dethklok, Buckethead, Insane Clown Posse, and a quartet of headbanging cellists, which is the whole thesis of this festival in one sentence.
Expect post-hardcore, metal, rock and emo across 142 acts.
Aftershock 2026 lineup: all 142 acts
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre — save anything straight to your schedule.Browse all 142 acts →
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre — save anything straight to your schedule.
Concept-album maximalists who treated emo as opera — marching-band drums, guitar harmonies, and a costume for every era, theatrical to the last note.
From Newark, NJ · Sounds like AFI, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, The Used
San Diego post-hardcore romantics enjoying a massive TikTok-era second act — the scene's most swooned-over comeback.
From San Diego, CA · Sounds like Sleeping With Sirens, A Day To Remember, Dance Gavin Dance
Prog-metal's cathedral builders — polyrhythms, lasers, and total audience surrender, Danny Carey's drumming alone worth the pilgrimage.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like A Perfect Circle, Deftones, Meshuggah, Puscifer
Grimy, Memphis-indebted rap about self-destruction, built into one of the largest underground followings in music — G59 loyalty runs religious.
From New Orleans, LA · Sounds like Ghostemane, City Morgue, Denzel Curry, Pouya
The pop-punk/metalcore hybrid blueprint — mosh-call breakdowns and sugar-rush hooks in equal measure, delivered with beach balls, confetti cannons, and total arena confidence.
From Ocala, FL · Sounds like The Amity Affliction, Parkway Drive, All Time Low, Beartooth
Hardcore kids who became goths and then a genuinely huge rock band — Davey Havok's full-commitment melodrama riding a catalog that runs from East Bay punk to 'Miss Murder'-era anthems.
From Ukiah, CA · Sounds like My Chemical Romance, The Cure, Alkaline Trio
Canada's post-hardcore heart — three voices trading scream, croon, and rasp across one beloved catalog, with reunion sets that feel like national holidays back home.
From St. Catharines, ON · Sounds like Thrice, Glassjaw, Silverstein, Cancer Bats
Classically trained Finnish cellists who started by covering Metallica and never stopped headbanging — symphonic metal where the strings genuinely shred.
From Helsinki, Finland · Sounds like Metallica, Rammstein
OC metalcore originators — 'Lip Gloss and Black' nostalgia with new-era polish, from a band that helped write the genre's melodic playbook in the first place.
From Orange County, CA · Sounds like Bullet For My Valentine, Avenged Sevenfold, As I Lay Dying
J-pop choreography welded to genuine power-metal chops — a premise that should not work and completely does, now with arena-scale production and a decade of converted skeptics.
From Tokyo, Japan · Sounds like Bring Me The Horizon, Dragonforce, Polyphia, Lovebites
Zakk Wylde's biker-metal brotherhood — pinch harmonics for days, Sabbath-weight riffs, and guitar solos treated as main events.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Ozzy Osbourne, Down, Corrosion of Conformity
Ice-T fronting a thrash band with the same bluntness he brought to rap — the point has never been subtle.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Rage Against the Machine, Suicidal Tendencies, Public Enemy
Max and Iggor performing Sepultura's 'Roots' in full — Brazilian metal history live, from the brothers who wrote it.
From Belo Horizonte, BR · Sounds like Sepultura, Nailbomb, Max Cavalera's Killer Be Killed
A solo billing built entirely around two decades of nu-metal and groove-metal frontman work — Mudvayne intensity and HELLYEAH swagger in one set.
From Peoria, IL · Sounds like Mudvayne, Hellyeah, Coal Chamber, Drowning Pool
Craig Owens's theatrical post-hardcore, reunited — MySpace-era drama with real stakes, piano flourishes and that unmistakable swooping vocal intact.
From Davison, MI · Sounds like Saosin
Anthony Green's art-punk flagship, reunited — soaring, strange, and beloved, with a fanbase that treats these songs as sacred text.
From Philadelphia, PA · Sounds like Saosin, La Dispute
Spooky-kid nu-metal with detuned bounce and a goth streak the genre mostly abandoned — 'Loco'-era heaviness back from the grave.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Korn, Static-X, Soulfly
Sci-fi concept-rock saga with arena hooks — 'Welcome Home' indeed, the Amory Wars mythology powering some of modern prog's biggest singalongs.
From Nyack, NY · Sounds like The Mars Volta, Thank You Scientist, Rush, Thrice
North Carolina crossover veterans who moved from hardcore into thick Southern sludge and stayed there — Sabbath swing filtered through a punk's impatience.
From Raleigh, NC · Sounds like DOWN, Crowbar, Black Sabbath, Melvins
Gothic-horror black metal with orchestration, shrieks, and a theatrical streak a mile wide — extreme metal's most committed haunted-house act.
From Suffolk, UK · Sounds like Dimmu Borgir, Emperor, Behemoth, Carach Angren
B-Real's nasal snarl over DJ Muggs's murk — the group that made stoner rap a genre with a flag, 'Insane in the Brain' still a jump-along ritual.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like House of Pain, Beastie Boys, Body Count
Swancore's funk-flecked flagship — technicolor riffs and dual-vocal whiplash, a prolific catalog that never stopped mutating.
From Sacramento, CA · Sounds like Sianvar, Capstan, Chon, A Lot Like Birds
Oingo Boingo's madman turned Tim Burton's composer — a berserk orchestral-rock spectacle that mashes film scores into art-punk chaos.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Oingo Boingo, Nine Inch Nails, Mr. Bungle, Tim Burton scores
Metalocalypse's cartoon death-metal band, real and devastating live — Brendon Small's shred played against the animation at brutal volume.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Amon Amarth, Children of Bodom, At the Gates, In Flames
NOLA sludge supergroup — Phil Anselmo fronting molasses-slow riffs built for a room with no air conditioning, swamp-heavy doom from scene royalty.
From New Orleans, LA · Sounds like Pantera, Crowbar, Corrosion of Conformity, Black Sabbath
Sunny California hardcore that treats a circle pit as a party rather than a fight — the scene's most reliably grinning live band.
From Santa Cruz, CA · Sounds like Turnstile, Power Trip, Municipal Waste, Gulch
'What It Is to Burn'-era post-hardcore, still one of the era's most-loved single records — a title track that remains a scene-wide scream-along.
From Temecula, CA · Sounds like Thrice, Thursday, Saosin
Rap-rock revivalists trading verses between a singer and an MC, straight out of the 2000s playbook — updated production, same adrenaline.
From Lancaster, PA · Sounds like Hollywood Undead, Bad Wolves, Linkin Park, I Prevail
Mid-2000s screamo whose most famous alumnus left to become a dubstep producer — 'Dear Diary' drama that still hits the scene's pleasure centers.
From Tampa, FL · Sounds like Alesana, Underoath, Chiodos
Ohio emo survivors whose mid-2000s records are still the reference point for the whole scream-over-the-chorus template — played now with veterans' gratitude.
From Dayton, OH · Sounds like Silverstein, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Story of the Year, Taking Back Sunday
Bluesy, scuffed-up rock delivered with a chip on the shoulder and a genuine gift for a chorus — grit and hooks at festival scale.
From Cape Cod, MA · Sounds like Royal Blood, Cage the Elephant, Rival Sons
Midwest emo's chaotic favorites — screamed choruses, absurd song titles, real feelings, and a crowd that knows every word including the yelps.
From Lansing, MI · Sounds like Origami Angel, Prince Daddy & The Hyena, Mom Jeans
The Faygo flies at sundown — whoop whoop, and genuinely one of music's strangest, most loyal communities gathered in one place.
From Detroit, MI · Sounds like Twiztid, Esham, Kottonmouth Kings, Yelawolf
Metalcore's standard-bearers — 'The End of Heartache' still detonates, two decades of the genre's template played by its authors.
From Westfield, MA · Sounds like As I Lay Dying, All That Remains, Trivium, Unearth
Texas hardcore at its most punishing — mosh calls with a message, and a low end that treats subtlety as a character flaw.
From Sherman, TX · Sounds like Knocked Loose, Terror, Hatebreed, Malevolence
Savannah sludge-psych institution — dual drummers, buzzsaw riffs, and swirling psychedelia, returned from a long hiatus with the heaviness intact.
From Savannah, GA · Sounds like Baroness, Mastodon, High on Fire, Torche
MCR, Thursday, and Circa Survive members' supergroup — urgent, veteran post-hardcore played like a first band, not a side project.
From USA
Narrative post-hardcore delivered closer to recitation than singing, and devastating for it — short stories screamed at full band volume.
From Grand Rapids, MI · Sounds like Touché Amoré, mewithoutYou, Pianos Become the Teeth
'My Own Worst Enemy' — one perfect song and a very good time, delivered by SoCal pros who know exactly why you came.
From Fullerton, CA · Sounds like Sugar Ray, Everclear, Smash Mouth, Fastball
Warped Tour survivors trading in the specific ache of a song you loved at sixteen — 'Miserable at Best' still empties the tear ducts.
From Tallahassee, FL · Sounds like All Time Low, The Maine, The Starting Line
The pop-punk band other pop-punk bands cite — three decades of unreasonably durable hooks and a work ethic to match.
From Coral Springs, FL · Sounds like Blink-182, Sum 41, The Starting Line, Simple Plan
San Antonio alt-metal showmen — bass-throwing spectacle, Grammy-nominated hooks, and a stage rig built like a science experiment.
From San Antonio, TX · Sounds like Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle, Sevendust
'Alive' and 'Youth of the Nation' — San Diego's nu-metal survivors, positivity intact through every scene cycle.
From San Diego, CA · Sounds like Linkin Park, Korn, 311, Incubus
Swiss beatdown with a genuinely unsettling vocal performance sitting on top of the chug — Europe's heaviest recent export.
From Switzerland · Sounds like Bodysnatcher, Spite, Kublai Khan TX
President
Chuck D's baritone over air-raid production — protest music that has never needed updating, with Flavor Flav as eternal hype engine.
From Long Island, NY · Sounds like Rage Against the Machine, Run-DMC, Beastie Boys
Josh Homme's robot-boogie riffs — heavy music with a lounge singer's sense of swing and menace, desert-rock royalty at full strut.
From Palm Desert, CA · Sounds like Kyuss, Arctic Monkeys, Them Crooked Vultures, Royal Blood
Theatrical pop-rock with orchestral flourishes and a frontman who can genuinely belt — Broadway instincts at Warped velocity.
From Tampa, FL · Sounds like Panic! at the Disco, All Time Low, Fall Out Boy, Palaye Royale
Lajon Witherspoon's soul-trained voice over grinding alt-metal — the reason they outlasted the scene, and the warmest crowd in heavy music.
From Atlanta, GA · Sounds like Godsmack, Disturbed, Chevelle
Alex Terrible's subterranean roar over deathcore built like siege machinery — as much spectacle as band, and heavier than both.
From Yekaterinburg, Russia · Sounds like Lorna Shore, Spite, Chelsea Grin, Kublai Khan TX
New-generation alt-metal built on a soulful clean vocal and a very modern low end — the format's next arena act in waiting.
From Memphis, TN · Sounds like Bad Omens, Sleep Token, Dead Poet Society, Dayseeker
Kellin Quinn's falsetto-fronted post-hardcore — Warped Tour royalty matured, with the high notes fully intact and scene-era devotion still filling rooms.
From Orlando, FL · Sounds like Of Mice & Men, Silverstein, Falling in Reverse
Space-suit cinematic rock — sci-fi lore with radio-metal hooks, a full 'demonstration' rather than a mere concert.
From Columbus, OH · Sounds like Breaking Benjamin, Muse, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Bad Wolves
Grunge-era hitmakers with a glam streak their peers were too earnest to attempt — 'Plush' through 'Interstate Love Song', hooks for days.
From San Diego, CA · Sounds like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Bush
Sun-bleached ska-punk-dub hybrid, now carried by Bradley Nowell's son with the songs left intact — '40oz. to Freedom' forever.
From Long Beach, CA · Sounds like 311, Slightly Stoopid, Dirty Heads, Pepper
Venice crossover legends — 'Institutionalized' and a pit that never ages, Cyco Mike still leading the charge.
From Venice, CA · Sounds like D.R.I., Municipal Waste, Body Count
A band whose survival story is inseparable from the music's insistence on pushing forward — melodic hardcore as literal testament.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Stick To Your Guns, Counterparts, Every Time I Die
Seattle's funk-flecked pop-metalcore — groove first, breakdowns second, and falsetto hooks the scene didn't see coming.
From Seattle, WA · Sounds like Issues, Dayseeker
Thirty years of hooks that snuck genuine punk speed onto daytime radio without anyone noticing — the catalog is basically all singles.
From Orange County, CA · Sounds like Bad Religion, NOFX, Pennywise, Green Day
Taylor Momsen's grunge-blooded hard rock — smoky, heavy, chart-topping, with more rock-radio #1s than most legacy acts.
From New York, NY · Sounds like Evanescence, The Dead Weather, Alice in Chains, Alter Bridge
Early-2000s pop-punk with more craft than the era gave it credit for — 'The Best of Me' aging like a yearbook photo you actually like.
From Churchville, PA · Sounds like The Early November, Taking Back Sunday, Yellowcard, The Movielife
Modern pop-punk standard-bearers — gruff, fast, and beloved, Walnut Creek's chip-on-shoulder anthems in full stride, pits and singalongs in equal measure.
From Walnut Creek, CA · Sounds like Neck Deep, The Wonder Years
Bert McCracken's scream-to-croon whiplash defined a corner of early-2000s post-hardcore and still detonates live — the chaos aged into craft.
From Orem, UT · Sounds like My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, Senses Fail
Pop-punk that grew up in public — suburban specifics rendered with novelistic detail, Dan Campbell narrating adulthood in real time.
From Lansdale, PA · Sounds like The Menzingers, Modern Baseball, A Day To Remember
Radio rock that pivoted from swagger to piano ballads and kept the audience either way — Vancouver pragmatists with hooks to spare.
From Vancouver, BC · Sounds like Nickelback, Three Days Grace, Finger Eleven
Memphis's murk-and-menace originators, whose tape-hiss production is now the foundation of half of underground rap — Oscar winners, improbably.
From Memphis, TN · Sounds like Project Pat, UGK, $UICIDEBOY$
'Full Collapse' pioneers — the bridge between hardcore and emo, still vital, with Geoff Rickly's yelp intact.
From New Brunswick, NJ
'They're Only Chasing Safety' to now — metalcore's restless innovators, reinventing loudly in every era, and the reinventions keep landing.
From Tampa, FL · Sounds like Thrice, Norma Jean, The Almost, Silverstein
Clean-chorus metalcore engineered for the big room, with breakdowns placed exactly where you want them — Ocala precision, radio ambition.
From Ocala, FL · Sounds like Fit For A King, August Burns Red, Beartooth, Silent Planet
'Check Yes Juliet' — MySpace-era pop-punk sunshine, Florida warmth that never curdled, and the chorus still checks yes.
From Bradenton, FL · Sounds like All Time Low, Boys Like Girls, The Maine, Mayday Parade
Unapologetic '70s riff worship played with enough conviction to make the pastiche irrelevant — 'Woman' still a lightning strike.
From Sydney, Australia · Sounds like Led Zeppelin, The Sword, Rival Sons
Nine MCs over dusty kung-fu-flick soul loops — still the most-imitated blueprint in rap, '36 Chambers' eternal.
From Staten Island, NY · Sounds like Nas, Mobb Deep, Public Enemy, GZA
Zakk Wylde playing Sabbath songs with reverence and absurd volume — a tribute act with a guitar hero attached, pinch harmonics included.
Sounds like Black Sabbath, Black Label Society, Pentagram
Early djent architects out of Minneapolis — eight-string polyrhythms and huge grooves whose low end still lands harder live than any recording has managed to capture.
From Minneapolis, MN · Sounds like Erra, Veil of Maya, Periphery
Literary-concept screamo out of Raleigh — dual vocals, Poe-inspired storylines, and no interest whatsoever in restraint, beloved by everyone who owned a studded belt in 2008.
From Raleigh, NC · Sounds like From First To Last, Chiodos, Escape the Fate
A concept record about being dead, delivered with more atmosphere than its scene usually allowed — 'What to Do When You Are Dead' remains a mid-2000s emo cult document.
From Teaneck, NJ · Sounds like Hawthorne Heights, Senses Fail, Taking Back Sunday
The original Of Mice & Men vocalist returning to the material after years away from touring — a scene-history moment for everyone who wore out those first records.
Sounds like Of Mice & Men, Blessthefall, Escape the Fate
Clean-and-scream metalcore from the Rise Records boom, played with more muscle than nostalgia — Phoenix scene veterans who kept the choruses enormous.
From Phoenix, AZ · Sounds like Miss May I, The Word Alive, Wage War
Blue Medusa
Florida beatdown with no interest in subtlety — grief and rage compressed into two-minute assaults, as heavy emotionally as it is sonically.
From Melbourne, FL · Sounds like Bodybox, Knocked Loose, Sanguisugabogg, Traitors
Brujeria
A KFC bucket, a white mask, and some of the fastest and strangest guitar playing anyone has committed to tape.
Sounds like Primus, Les Claypool, Mr. Bungle
Caskets
Sounds like While She Sleeps, Bad Omens
Cenobia
CKY
Fat Mike's genre-agnostic side project — punk, rap, and folk stitched into something genuinely odd, with Ceschi's rapid-fire verses at the center.
From Oakland, CA · Sounds like Get Dead, Ceschi, Fat Mike, Sage Francis
Melodic hardcore at its most emotionally scoured — Brendan Murphy's voice permanently at the edge, and a Canadian scene institution because of it.
From Hamilton, ON · Sounds like Stick To Your Guns, Being As An Ocean, The Ghost Inside
NYHC founders whose 'Age of Quarrel' remains the crossover blueprint — hardcore fury and metal precision fused before the terms had settled.
From New York, NY · Sounds like Agnostic Front, Madball, Sick of It All
Nashville rapper with a rock streak and a fiercely independent release history — melodic grit built entirely outside the label system.
From Nashville, TN · Sounds like Yelawolf, iann dior, Bryce Vine
Drop Dead, Gorgeous
Forever attached to one enormous song, and entirely comfortable with that — 'Bodies' still detonates, and the rest of the set hits harder than expected.
From Dallas, TX · Sounds like Godsmack, Saliva, Sevendust
Post-hardcore turned silk-smooth pop-rock, with one of the scene's most distinctive clean vocals — a reinvention so complete the back catalog sounds like another band.
From Lexington, KY · Sounds like Saosin
'The Question'-era screamo-pop veterans, still swinging — dueling vocals and dynamic whiplash from one of the scene's smartest bands.
From Seattle, WA · Sounds like Anberlin, Norma Jean, Silverstein, The Chariot
Vegas post-hardcore that survived a frontman swap and a decade of scene churn intact — arena-scene hooks with a survivor's stubbornness.
From Las Vegas, NV · Sounds like Falling In Reverse, Blessthefall, Set It Off
Eyes Set To Kill
Fear, And Loathing in Las Vegas
'Hey Man Nice Shot' — Richard Patrick's industrial-rock sneer intact, machine-tooled riffs from NIN's family tree.
From Cleveland, OH · Sounds like Nine Inch Nails, Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills, Rob Zombie
Canadian alt-rock with a knack for a slinky, unexpected groove under the radio singles — 'Paralyzer' the funkiest thing rock radio played that decade.
From Burlington, ON · Sounds like Chevelle, Breaking Benjamin, Theory of a Deadman
Twinkly, self-lacerating emo about mental health, sung like it's being confessed rather than performed — catharsis with a Nashville accent.
From Nashville, TN · Sounds like Origami Angel, Mom Jeans, Prince Daddy & The Hyena, Microwave
Alabama metalcore turned mean — melodic roots swapped for something nu-metal-adjacent, and the heaviness pays for the trade.
From Tuscaloosa, AL · Sounds like Kublai Khan TX, Knocked Loose, Varials
Haarper
A drummer-vocalist fronting frantic, jazz-inflected post-hardcore that changes direction every eight bars — Chico's contribution to the Swancore canon.
From Chico, CA · Sounds like Chon, The Fall of Troy
Newer West Coast hardcore working the same fast, mean seam as its Bay Area peers — no-frills aggression built for short, violent sets.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Sunami, Scowl, Pain of Truth, No Cure
Page Hamilton's precision-machined downstrokes — the band a generation of nu-metal quietly ripped off, still tighter than all of them.
From New York, NY · Sounds like Quicksand, Melvins, Deftones
Welsh post-hardcore romantics — soaring, heart-first heaviness, every chorus written to be wept through, Cardiff sincerity at full wingspan.
From Cardiff, UK · Sounds like Static Dress, Loathe, Boston Manor, Casey
Holywatr
Metalcore with 8-bit keyboard leads — the band that made 'Nintendocore' an actual thing people argue about, chaotic and funnier live than seems possible.
From Lake Forest, CA · Sounds like The Number Twelve Looks Like You, The Dillinger Escape Plan
I See Stars
Sounds like Attack Attack!, Of Mice & Men, Crown the Empire
Crunk-screamo maximalism — the most 2008 band that has ever existed, affectionately, MySpace chaos preserved in amber and played loud.
From Miami, FL · Sounds like Attack Attack!, Enter Shikari, Blood on the Dance Floor
Ill Niño
ivri
Toronto artist who moved from rap features into full pop-punk, and sounds more at home there — emo-rap roots showing through the power chords.
From Toronto, ON · Sounds like mgk, nothing,nowhere., blackbear, Iann Dior
Ladrones
LEAP
Forty years of deliberately difficult, punishingly slow riffs — and the band Nirvana learned from, still outweirding everyone downstream.
From Montesano, WA · Sounds like Boris, Helmet, Neurosis, Mudhoney
Party thrash played at a ludicrous clip — beer, gore, and songs that rarely reach two minutes, with crowd-surfing quotas to meet.
From Richmond, VA · Sounds like DRAIN, Power Trip, Iron Reagan
Melodic death metal about goblins, performed with a technical seriousness that makes the joke land harder — dancing goblin mascot included.
From Los Angeles, CA · Sounds like Trollfest, Gloryhammer, Wintersun
Sacramento's own late-'90s radio rock, playing a hometown crowd that remembers every word — 'Why I'm Here' loudest of all.
From Sacramento, CA · Sounds like Everclear, Lit, Fuel
Slam played with a hip-hop swagger — gurgles, gore, and breakdowns tuned to the floor, the internet's favorite new heaviness.
From Little Rock, AR · Sounds like Sanguisugabogg, 200 Stab Wounds, Ingested, Devourment
Proto-doom lifers whose long-delayed recognition arrived decades after the riffs did — still summoning the '70s dark.
From Arlington, VA · Sounds like Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus, DOWN
Psychostick
'End of Silence' anniversary — orchestral Christian metal's biggest debut, replayed in full with the strings intact.
From Nashville, TN · Sounds like Breaking Benjamin, Thousand Foot Krutch, Three Days Grace
Rivers of Nihil
Sounds like The Black Dahlia Murder, Cattle Decapitation
The Anthony Green-fronted EP is the stuff of scene legend; the live show still leans on it — 'Seven Years' guaranteed to level the tent.
From Newport Beach, CA · Sounds like Circa Survive, Chiodos, Thrice
New Jersey post-hardcore that got angrier and more political as it aged, not softer — Buddy Nielsen leading with total candor.
From Ridgewood, NJ · Sounds like Silverstein, Hawthorne Heights, The Used
Silly Goose
Max Cavalera's post-Sepultura vehicle, still fusing tribal percussion with pure groove-metal weight — three decades of roar undiminished.
From Phoenix, AZ · Sounds like Sepultura, Ministry, Max Cavalera, Fear Factory
Bay Area deathcore with a bottomless low end and breakdowns that arrive like a door being kicked in — no melody, no mercy.
From San Francisco, CA · Sounds like Slaughter to Prevail, Kublai Khan, Suicide Silence
Melodic hardcore with a conscience — sermons about solidarity delivered at full sprint, Orange County conviction two decades deep.
From Orange County, CA · Sounds like Terror, Comeback Kid, Counterparts, Have Heart
Punishingly slow, tuned-into-the-floor heaviness with Vincent Bennett's misanthropy on top — doom tempos, hardcore intent, heaviness as a moral position.
From Chicopee, MA · Sounds like Bodysnatcher, Emmure, Kublai Khan TX
Melodic death metal played with a fan's enthusiasm — carrying on after the loss of their frontman, with the songbook honored nightly.
From Waterford, MI · Sounds like Carnifex, Whitechapel, Cattle Decapitation
Metalcore that kept getting darker and more atmospheric long after their scene peers stopped trying — the rare legacy act still improving.
From Dayton, OH · Sounds like We Came As Romans, August Burns Red, Wage War
The Fall of Troy
The Pretty Wild
The Union Underground
The Violent Hour
The Word Alive
Sounds like Of Mice & Men, Motionless in White
'Possum Kingdom' — Texas alt-rock's eternal dark ride, still promising to be your angel nightly, Texas gothic in radio form.
From Fort Worth, TX · Sounds like Silverchair, Bush, Local H, Fuel
ünloco
vianova
Wind Walkers
Sounds like Wage War
The headliners
- My Chemical Romance — Concept-album maximalists who treated emo as opera — marching-band drums, guitar harmonies, and a costume for every era, theatrical to the last note.
- Tool — Prog-metal's cathedral builders — polyrhythms, lasers, and total audience surrender, Danny Carey's drumming alone worth the pilgrimage.
- Limp Bizkit — Nu-metal's chaos agents in their beloved victory-lap era — Fred Durst does it all for the nookie, still, and the field does it with him.
- Pierce The Veil — San Diego post-hardcore romantics enjoying a massive TikTok-era second act — the scene's most swooned-over comeback.
Up-and-comers to catch early
- Sleep Theory — Memphis's fastest-rising alt-metal band — soul in the clean vocal, weight everywhere else.
- The Home Team — Groove-first pop-metalcore from Seattle; the rare heavy band you can actually dance to.
- DRAIN — Santa Cruz hardcore run like a pool party — the friendliest pit of the weekend.
- Paleface Swiss — Swiss beatdown that went from clubs to festival stages in about three years flat.
- Spite — Bay Area deathcore on close-to-home turf, and getting bigger with every tour.
- Bodysnatcher — Two minutes at a time and no wasted motion — Florida beatdown at its most direct.
Other acts worth planning around
- Wu-Tang Clan — Nine MCs on a rock festival's main stage, and still the loudest crowd of Friday.
- Public Enemy — Chuck D on a Sacramento riverbank; the catalog has never needed a rewrite.
- Danny Elfman — Boingo songs and film scores in one set — the strangest booking on the poster, and probably the best.
- Dethklok — A cartoon band with a very real, very good death-metal lineup standing behind it.
- Body Count feat. Ice-T — Thirty-five years of saying it plainly, at thrash tempo.
- Buckethead — No banter, no let-up — an hour of the fastest and weirdest guitar playing anyone will do all weekend.
- Circa Survive — Reunited and playing festivals again after years away; the Saturday set worth arriving early for.
- Oleander — A hometown booking with actual history — late-'90s Sacramento radio rock, back on its own riverfront.
The lineup by day
- Thursday, October 1: My Chemical Romance, The Offspring, Sublime, The Used, The Pretty Reckless, Hot Mulligan + 29 more
- Friday, October 2: Limp Bizkit, $UICIDEBOY$, Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Slaughter To Prevail + 30 more
- Saturday, October 3: Pierce The Veil, A Day To Remember, BABYMETAL, Circa Survive, The Story So Far, Sleeping with Sirens + 30 more
- Sunday, October 4: Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Danny Elfman, AFI, Stone Temple Pilots, Dance Gavin Dance + 29 more
Aftershock 2026 lineup FAQ
When is Aftershock 2026?
October 1–4, 2026 — Thursday through Sunday.
Where does Aftershock take place?
Discovery Park in Sacramento, California, where the American and Sacramento rivers meet.
Who is headlining Aftershock 2026?
My Chemical Romance (Thursday), Limp Bizkit (Friday), Pierce The Veil (Saturday), and Tool (Sunday).
How many bands are playing Aftershock 2026?
142 announced acts across four days.
What days do specific bands play?
Every act's day is already on this page — expand the full lineup below or check the day-by-day breakdown. Stage times usually land closer to the festival.
How do I figure out which of the 142 bands I'd actually like?
Tell the finder at the top of this page a few bands you love — it'll match you with your must-see sets, with reasons why.
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Lollapalooza lineup →Hopscotch lineup →The Fest lineup →Rebellion lineup →III Points lineup →Lost Lands lineup →Louder Than Life lineup →All Points East lineup →End of the Road lineup →ARC lineup →Warped Tour Orlando lineup →Austin City Limits lineup →Reading & Leeds lineup →EDC Orlando lineup →Bourbon & Beyond lineup →Riot Fest lineup →Outside Lands lineup →Green Man lineup →HARD Summer lineup →Osheaga lineup →Bass Canyon lineup →Nocturnal Wonderland lineup →Hulaween lineup →Dreamstate SoCal lineup →Honcho Campout lineup →Portola lineup →Furnace Fest lineup →Shaky Knees lineup →Sick New World Texas lineup →Hinterland lineup →Wasteland lineup →BOO Seattle lineup →All Things Go DMV lineup →îLESONIQ lineup →Raleigh Wide Open lineup →Rock in Rio lineup →Oceans Calling lineup →Darker Waves lineup →Lights All Night lineup →Bumbershoot lineup →LASSO Montréal lineup →Ohana lineup →Sea.Hear.Now lineup →Country Calling lineup →Iron Blossom lineup →All Things Go NYC lineup →