From the same folks that brought the Epicenter Festival to Southern California comes the inaugural Aftershock Festival to Northern California. The organizers fenced off Sacramento’s Discovery Park, rented a few of those transformer stages (you know, those semis that magically unfold into a stage), line the perimeter with porta potties, food trucks and beer tents and schlep a bunch of bands up north from the previous day’s show. Voila, instant festival! Of course there’s more to putting on an event of this magnitude (pun intended) than that but the throngs that filled the park on this sunny Sunday afternoon had no reason to sweat those details … they were there to eat, drink and most importantly rock.
Things kicked off on the main stage before noon with Fallrise, and despite the early hour, the throngs were already filling the park. As the sun reached its peak and the temperature pushed into the 90’s, the crowd tended to huddle in the shade only to emerge when their favorite bands hit the stage. By the time Theory Of A Deadman hit the stage, things were in full swing and didn’t let up as Chevelle and Bush rocked the crowd to its core.
But when hometown heroes Deftones took the stage as the sun began to set, things went absolutely Richter. To say that Deftones owned the festival would be an understatement … Chino sprinted back and forth across the stage, clearly enjoying the chaos erupting in front of him. It seems many in the crowd saved up some energy for just that moment; crowd surfers where flying over the rail left and right keeping security busy throughout the hour-plus set.
The only downtime was before STP’s set when their 8:30 pm set time came and went, potentially leaving some in the audience a little wary after the band’s issue with timeliness the previous week. But better late than never, STP finally took the stage 20 minutes late and if there was any concern, it quickly evaporated as STP blazed through their set. Unfortunately, there were a few casualties of the day passed out on blankets that missed it.
Not to be missed was the second stage which had a healthy dose of variety that did not go unnoticed. Local bands Stepchild and Oleader pulled sizeable crowds and even what might be considered the odd bands out (Escape the Fate, Hollywood Undead) had eager kids ditching the main stage acts to secure a spot up front.
Overall it was a great start for what will hopefully be an annual event! Click the links below for photo galleries of each of the bands’ performances.
Main Stage:
- Stone Temple Pilots
- Deftones
- Bush
- Chevelle
- Theory Of A Deadman
- Beware of Darkness
- Fallrise
Second Stage:
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