Ready to test your mettle with 12-plus hours of metal?
You’d better be: After taking 2025 off, Sick New World returns to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on Saturday, with nearly 50 bands performing on four stages.
That’s a whole lotta “grrrrr!”
The massive heavy music gathering spans nü metal (Korn, Coal Chamber, P.O.D.), hardcore (Speed, Sunami, Knocked Loose), synthwave (Carpenter Brut), new wave (She Wants Revenge), former-Oingo-Boingo-frontmen-turned-iconic-film-composers (Danny Elfman) and a whole lot more. Hey, even Alien Ant Farm got an invite.
With so many performers, you’ll have to make some tough decisions about which acts to see and when. Here are 10 not to miss:
Acid Bath
Green Stage, 1:55 p.m.
These darkly emotive New Orleans sludge metal cult favorites reunited after 28 years last spring, and Sick New World 2025 was supposed to have been their first show back. They make up for lost time this weekend.
Mastodon
Purple Stage, 2:35 p.m.
The aptly named progressive metallers with a truly elephantine sound reportedly hit the studio last fall to track their forthcoming ninth album and first without late guitarist Brent Hinds, who tragically died in a motorcycle accident in August. Maybe they’ll air a new tune?
Kittie
Spiral Stage, 2:55 p.m.
With not a whole lot of girl power on the lineup this year, Sick New World is as heavy on the dudes as it is just plain ol’ heavy. But there is the always-explosive Kittie, returning for the third time, along with other female-fronted acts to check out like Violent Vira (Green Stage, 11:40 a.m.), Vowws (Spiral Stage, noon), Lords of Acid (Spiral Stage, 2:2o p.m.) and Evanescence (Green Stage, 6:50 p.m.).
Cypress Hill
Green Stage, 3:15 p.m.
Hip-hop acts are as rare as Hello Kitty garb at this largely black-clad gathering, but Cypress Hill can more than hold their own with a hard-eyed songbook that’s both rugged and adrenalized enough to catalyze many mosh pits.
A.F.I.
Purple Stage, 3:50 p.m.
The glammed-out goth punks went full-on ’80s new wave on their latest album, “Silver Bleeds the Black Sun.” Imagine Joy Division with fangs.
Deafheaven
Diablo Stage, 5:55 p.m.
Sad face: Better Lovers, Ego Kill Talent, KMFDM and Scowl all had to bow out of this year’s fest for various reasons. Happy face: Among their replacements is kaleidoscopic, shoegaze-informed black metallers Deafheaven, hitting Vegas for the first time in five years in support of their bristling, beatific latest album, “Lonely People With Power.”
Terror + Pain of the Truth
Diablo Stage, 6:30 p.m.
Hardcore heavyweights meet like a tire iron to the jaw when Terror and Pain of Truth share the stage in a rare Sick New World collab set.
Ministry
Spiral Stage, 7:50 p.m.
Prepare to be hurled into some “Brick Windows” when these industrial metal forebears play their pummeling/polarizing 1996 album, “Filth Pig,” in its entirety with a special appearance by former bassist Paul Barker.
Poison the Well
Diablo Stage, 8:50 p.m.
The reactivated metalcore act just dropped their first new album in 17 years with March’s “Peace in Place.” Expect no such peace when they hit the stage …
System of a Down
Purple Stage, 10:25 p.m.
You can’t have Sick New World without nü metal prime movers System of a Down — literally, the fest was canceled the only other time they weren’t headlining. Back for Year 3, this is one of only two U.S. shows the band is scheduled to play in 2026. See ’em now or else you gotta spring for a flight to Texas in October.
Contact Jason Bracelin at [email protected] or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.