Festival Review: Aftershock 2026 Brings Dust, Heat and Metal To Sacramento's Discovery Park

For four days amidst the sweltering heat, Aftershock Festival returned to Sacramento’s Discovery Park, featuring some of the biggest names in punk, hard rock, heavy metal and emo across five stages. Aftershock - and really, any Danny Wimmer Presents festival - can be overwhelming. You have 120 bands across five stages in four days, sound coming at you from all angles, smells of food wafting over from the dozens of food stands posted up throughout the festival grounds. It’s sensory overload. Regardless of which stage you found yourself at, you were bound to have a great time.

The festival kicked off on Thursday morning. I stayed at the main stages (Aftershock Stage and Shockwave Stage) for a majority of the day, where bands like Hawthorne Heights, Mayday Parade, We The Kings, Hot Mulligan, Lit and The Used played outstanding sets that highlighted their decades-long careers. The sun started to set as Sublime - now fronted by Bradley Nowell’s son, Jakob - played the penultimate set on the Aftershock Stage. The evening was closed by none other than My Chemical Romance, who brought their stunning ‘Long Live The Black Parade’ show to life one final time. Dressed in their iconic marching band uniforms, the four-piece band played through every song on their Black Parade album, complete with outlandish theatrics and storylines. The band will conclude the ‘Long Live The Black Parade’ storyline at the end of the month with five shows at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, I suffered a medical emergency towards the end of Day 1, so I opted to stay home on Day 2 and cannot report on anything. For what it’s worth, I heard that the hip-hop-heavy lineup featured excellent performances from Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan, Insane Clown Posse and nu-metal headliners Limp Bizkit.

Day 3 ended up being the hottest day of the weekend, with scorching temperatures nearly hitting 100 degrees. Fans of Pierce the Veil, the headlining act of the night, waited through the excruciating temperatures for hours to see the San Diego band play one of the biggest shows of their career. Chiodos - which at this point, is just original vocalist Craig Owens - played the Aftershock Stage with a barrage of fan-favorite hits, while artists like Sleeping With Sirens and A Day To Remember drew some of the day’s biggest crowds and played scene-favorite anthems as crowd surfers piled their way over the barricades at the front of the stages. If anything, Saturday’s show felt like a win for the “scene” - bands that were once ridiculed for wearing tight jeans, straightening their hair, and having higher vocal ranges attained a level of seniority amongst the metal crowd, earning the respect of thousands in attendance. There is a bit of a bias here, as I have known the Pierce the Veil guys for a number of years, but it was truly remarkable to see them play a crowd this big, and it may be the best show I’ve ever seen them play. Songs from every album in their twenty-year career were played, but it was the songs from Collide With The Sky and their debut, A Flair For The Dramatic that hit me the hardest. I remember seeing a performance of “Yeah Boy And Doll Face” at the now-defunct San Jose Skate when the band were opening for Dance Gavin Dance. To see that song performed in front of 70,000 people, all singing the words back, was a surreal moment in my many years as a concert-goer, and one that I’ll never forget.

The final day of the festival closed out amidst overcast conditions and what felt like a giant cloud of dirt emanating in the air. One of the most anticipated sets of the day happened over at the Epicenter Stage, where anonymous masked collective PRESIDENT played their first ever Aftershock performance. While no one knows who the performer is - although rumors have persisted - he has generated a remarkable amount of press with the release of a single EP and a brand new album, Blood of Your Empire. The anonymous musician thrilled a crowd of thousands with songs from the album, and did it all without uttering a single word between songs. Sometimes the magic is in the mystery of it all.

Perhaps the best set of the day came from multi-instrumentalist and composer Danny Elfman, who played the second-to-last set of the day on the Aftershock Stage. Elfman has had one of the most interesting careers of any musician, fronting the rock act Oingo Boingo before developing an illustrious career as a film and television. Elfman performed a number of solo songs, which were punctuated by an orchestra that performed some of his most iconic scores from The Simpsons, Tim Burton’s Batman, Spider-Man, Beetlejuice, as well as a performance of “This Is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The evening was closed by prog-metal act Tool, who over the course of nearly ninety minutes played only ten songs. If you’ve never heard of Tool or seen them in a live capacity, this is normal; most of their songs clock in close to the ten-minute range. The band opted to not make use of the jumbotron screens posted throughout the festival grounds, so unless you were plastered up against the stage, you really had to listen. Tool has always been an acquired taste in the metal community, but there’s no denying that their musicianship is exemplary and there’s a reason that they continue to draw massive crowds to their shows.

By the end of the weekend, I was physically and mentally exhausted, as I’m sure the thousands of other fans in attendance were as well. Aftershock is a monster of a festival and not for the faint of heart, but its rewards are abundant to those who can brave the heat, the dirt, the sweat, and the grit. It is undoubtedly the best way to see the most acts in one place over a four-day weekend, and it seems like it will remain a Sacramento staple for decades to come.

My Chemical Romance Set List
The Black Parade
The End.
Dead!
This Is How I Disappear
The Sharpest Lives
Welcome To The Black Parade
I Don’t Love You
House of Wolves
Cancer
Mama
Sleep
Teenagers
Disenchanted
Famous Last Words
The End. (Reprise)

Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)
Thank You For The Venom
I’m Not Okay (I Promise)
Helena

Limp Bizkit Set List
Break Stuff
My Generation
Livin’ It Up
Thieves (Ministry cover)
Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle)
9 Teen 90 Nine
Hot Dog
Dad Vibes
Faith (George Michael cover)
My Way
Take a Look Around
Boiler
Nookie/Full Nelson
Break Stuff

Pierce The Veil Set List
May These Noises Startle You In Your Sleep Tonight
Hell Above
Caraphernelia
Bulls In The Bronx
Where Is My Mind? (Pixies cover)
Floral & Fading
I’d Rather Die Than Be Famous
Yeah Boy and Doll Face
She Makes Dirty Words Sound Pretty
I Don’t Care If You’re Contagious
Wonderless
Pass The Nirvana
So Far So Fake
Emergency Contact
A Match Into Water
Circles
Hold On Till May
King For A Day

Tool Set List
Stinkfist
Rosetta Stoned
Fear Inoculum
The Grudge
H.
Hambi
Pneuma
Crawl Away
Invincible
Vicarious