The largest rock festival on the West Coast, Aftershock returns to Sacramento's Discovery Park Oct. 2-5, 2025 with blink-182, Deftones, Korn, Bring Me The Horizon & more. We sat down Danny Wimmer Presents Head of Talent, Del Williams, to ask about this year's lineup, an updated festival layout, and more.
On a very pop-punk-friendly first day of the festival this year, Williams said: "When we were able to confirm blink-182, we really want to super serve that day around blink fans. I think blink is one of those unique bands where fans of any genre really loves them because of their repertoire. They put on such a great performance and I challenge anyone to find somebody that's a better drummer than Travis Barker. it was really important for us to have acts that blended well with blink-182 and top to bottom it's really cool. Good Charlotte is interesting because it is their exclusive West Coast festival. They haven't been at the market a long time and they have been wanting to play some DWP festivals for a bit. They don't do a lot so that is a really a coup because we do wanna have some fresh acts in there that aren't overplayed. That's an example of what we wanted to do. I think there was a camaraderie of a lot of these acts where when they heard that the other acts that were gonna be on that day they were all in. They really wanted to be part of that."
2024 gave us headliners that included Motley Crue, Iron Maiden & Slayer. We asked Williams if it was intentional to lean younger with this year's headliners: "I will say that we wanted Deftones back for a long time. They were actually one of the first headliners we ever had back in 2012. They've always been a top 5 choice for the fans to bring back to Aftershock. There was a conscious decision to go with younger bands [than last year]. It was interesting because there was a cycle where there was some rock royalty that was a bit older that really fit the timing of [2024]. But we think it's really important to recognize the next wave of headliners. I think Bring Me The Horizon is a really great example of that. Internationally, they've been a headlining act, but they're really starting to emerge in as a headliner act in America. It's their time. They can do 50,000 people in São Paulo, they can sell out two O2s in London, and now they're a legit arena rock band in America. There's also a number of emerging acts we think have the potential to become headliners within the next year or two. It's really important for us to represent the future."
Related
This year's Aftershock also has a bit of a different layout that sees a shift from five stages to four. We asked Williams why that change was made: "The position of Stage 5 last year was not ideal. We felt that it was best to reconfigure things a little bit so that it was easier to navigate and not as congested. I think the great thing about Discovery Park is you can navigate the park really well. The other thing that makes it worthwhile is that there's a lot of shade. If it happens to be over 100 degrees, having that shade makes it much more comfortable. It's actually my favorite venue of any of the festivals we do because of that. But that's why we cut back on the number of stages because we felt maybe it was a little too jammed."
Passes for Aftershock 2025 are on sale now.