The seventh annual Monster Energy Aftershock Festival took place at Discovery Park in Sacramento this past weekend (October 13th and 14th), proving its California’s biggest hard rock and metal festival.

California’s premier hard rock festival made some changes expanding the grounds for festival goers by enhancing the VIP sections giving them a closer area to watch the bands hit the stage. There were plenty of key areas to watch or sit and enjoy the festival by video screens. If you were waiting for another band during performances at either the ‘Mainstage’ or ‘Discovery’ you could watch the bands on video screens, so you don’t miss anyone. That was a great addition.

There was also a new area under the freeway with art installations, new beer companies, smoke shops and plenty of delicious food options like Gyros, 2-foot hotdogs, giant BBQ Turkey legs, chicken and waffles, Lobster, and wood oven pizza.

Continue to get all the details and which bands were the standouts for the Monster Energy Aftershock Festival 2018…

CelebNMusic247.com was front and center in all the action at the two-day sold-out event.

The Monster Energy Aftershock Festival 2018 was jam-packed with major rock acts.

This year’s lineup includes hometown favorites The Deftones (gallery), who came back to rock. This was their second time at the Monster Energy Aftershock Festival. The Deftones made their first appearance at Gibson Ranch in 2015. Other acts that made a second return to Aftershock since their 2015 Gibson Ranch sets were Shinedown and Sevendust who also put on stellar performances.

This year each band made sure to get the crowd amped encouraging everyone to crowd surf, but it was Incubus, who had wheelchair crowd surfers, which was a truly amazing sight.

There were man great performances like Asking Alexandria, Godsmack, Seether, Dorothy, Bullet For My Valentine, Alice In Chains. The up and coming artists and standouts to CelebNMusic247.com include Viza, Hyro The Hero, The Fever 333 and Dirty Honey.

One of the best highlights from this year’s Monster Energy Aftershock Festival was the 5-song tribute to the late Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul (whose band Hellyeah was scheduled to play the festival before his sudden death earlier this year) curated by SiriusXM metal ambassador Jose Mangin. It literally blew us away as each song was performed by a rotating cast of musicians.

The band members who appeared on stage were members of Gwar, Megadeath, Shinedown, Kyng, Korn, and Godsmack. It was incredible, and our favorite moment was when Korn’s Jonathan Davis and Godsmack’s Sully Erna closing the set with the Pantera classic “Walk.” Vinnie’s wife was side-stage making sure that Vinnie’s legacy lived on. It was one of those moments in rock history that is already legendary. Thank you, Aftershock and Jose Mangin.

The craziest sets at Aftershock 2018:

The craziest sets go hands down to three bands who literally had festival goers going wild was At The Drive-In with a chaotic set which saw vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala pacing the stage while throwing his mic stand, jumping off amplifiers and picking up drummer Tony Hajjar’s cymbals. The other two performances go to Hyro The Hero, The Fever 333.

Closing Monster Energy Aftershock Festival 7 was the crowd-pleasing, metal God performance from System of a Down. It was a wall of people going crazy, hanging from the trees just to make sure they got their fill of Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian, and John Dolmayan. System of a Down performed hits like “Prison Song,” “Chop Suey,” “Hypnotize,” and “Lost In Hollywood” before ending Sunday night with “Sugar.”

Aftershock 2018 is going down in the books as one of the best years of the festival.

Please check out our galleries to see photos from each day and the bands performing…