The sky opened up, and a whole lot of mosh pits followed suit.
Perhaps it was fitting that heavy cloud coverage greeted the return of heavy music festival Sick New World on Saturday at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, leading to brief showers at the end of the night.
After all, the sounds here leaned toward the dark and overcast.
For nearly 13 hours, 50 bands performed on four stages amid a vast landscape of inflatable devils, skateboarder half-pipes, System of a Down-themed stir fry specials (chop suey, of course, available at the Hibachi Express food truck) and vendors hawking “Freak on a Leash” nü metal pet gear.
Yeah, it was a lot to chronicle — especially on wet notebook pages.
Here are five highlights from our long day of heaviness:
Let’s do the time warp again
Clothes black, face caked in white, Marilyn Manson pried open a wormhole on the Purple Stage.
“Let’s take you back to 1996,” he said by way of introducing an assaultive “Angel With the Scabbed Wings,” culled from his breakout second album, “Antichrist Superstar,” released in October of that year.
That’s a significant month for this crowd: A week after “Antichrist” hit shelves, firing Manson into the mainstream, Sick New World co-headliners Korn dropped their second album, “Life Is Peachy,” which became the first nü metal record to debut in the top five of the Billboard Top 200, igniting a scene that still burns bright three decades later as evidenced by the tens of thousands in attendance here.
Korn played a rare B-side from that album, “Proud,” during their 75-minute set on the Green Stage, the first time they’d done so in 15 years. They also debuted a new tune, “Reward the Scars,” whose title says it all: Turning emotional tumult into songs of down-tuned triumph is what these dudes do best.
Korn’s success paved the way for their L.A. scene mates System of a Down, who once again headlined Sick New World on the Purple Stage.
They’re a fractious bunch, which guitarist Daron Malakian alluded to at one point, albeit as a call for unity in divisive times.
“If we can be on stage with different thoughts and different beliefs, you can be together, too,” he advised.
But System puts this creative tension to good use, their sound as all-over-the-place as their contrasting political viewpoints — manic, emotive, manically emotive. Their 25-song performance somehow managed to be equally fierce and heartfelt, absurd and poignant.
About a half an hour into the band’s set, it started to rain intermittently, dampening a whole lot of black T-shirts, but not a whole lot of spirits.
The ‘Filth’ and the fury
1996 wasn’t all about baggy pants and the “Beautiful People.”
For industrial metallers Ministry, it was also about extending a middle finger to their own commercial success via their borderline impenetrable sixth album, “Filth Pig,” released that January.
After going platinum with 1992’s fast and righteously furious “Psalm 69,” the band did an about-face on its follow-up, slowing things down into a series of lumbering, guitar-heavy dirges that trawled the darkest recesses of frontman Al Jourgensen’s psyche.
On the Spiral Stage, they performed the album in its entirety (well, almost), although not in its original running order, playing some songs live for the first time ever, like the aptly titled “Brick Windows” and the scabrous “Useless,” for which the band was joined by former bassist Paul Barker.
Unfortunately, their time ran out before the band could play what was supposed to be a set-ending “The Fall,” much to Jourgensen’s chagrin.
It was a bummer, but also strangely appropriate: Nothing about this album goes down smoothly, so why should its live debut be any different?
Lacing up the boogie shoes
It was a full-on dance-off at the Spiral Stage.
First up, darksynth troupe Carpenter Brut put the hammer down on Michael Sembello’s “Flashdance” soundtrack staple “Maniac,” outfitting the song with thrash riffs and seismic drumming in place of leg warmers and sky-scraping, Aquanet-abetted ’80s bangs.
Not to be out done, a few hours later, post-punk revivalists She Wants Revenge catalyzed some serious boogeying with their set-closing smash “Tear You Apart.”
“Got a big plan, this mindset, maybe it’s right / At the right place and right time, maybe tonight?” frontman Justin Warfield sang, turning that “maybe” into a “definitely” on the evening in question.
Blackness rolls on
It was an overcast day, but we’re pretty sure that even if the sun had been out, it would have taken a smoke break once Acid Bath hit the stage.
“Did you bring the dark clouds with you?” singer Dax Riggs wondered of himself between songs on the Green Stage.
No, he brought something far, far darker: Acid Bath’s hauntingly bleak and beatific songbook.
A year ago to the day, the New Orleans sludge metal forebears played their first show in over 3½ decades, a reunion ecstatically embraced by the band’s rabid cult following, which grew mightily during their dormancy.
Acid Bath released just two albums during their initial run, the most recent being 1996’s “Paegan Terrorism Tactics” (that was some year for heavy music, no?).
But those records’ influence has far surpassed their modest sales, Acid Bath’s by-turns melancholic and menacing sound blossoming like a black rose in the years since. Its petals were on full display here, Riggs’ soulful melodies buoying songs indebted to deep grooves and an even deeper sense of despair.
“Can you feel the cold death that rides along your spine?” Riggs questioned during an epic “Bleed Me an Ocean.” “Let the blackness roll on.”
And on and on it rolled …
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Jazz hands incarnate, Davey Havok hit the stage like an exclamation point Ziplocked in leather.
The A.F.I. frontman possesses a physical exuberance suggestive of the late, great fitness guru Richard Simmons hooked up to a Red Bull IV drip.
His ceaseless, breathless bounding across the Purple Stage powered A.F.I.’s hit-heavy set, in which the band connected the dots between the shout-along horror punk of The Misfits, the emotive gloom of The Cure and the dark electronic undercurrents of Depeche Mode.
This was the group’s first stop in town in support of their latest record, “Silver Bleeds the Black Sun,” in which they fully cannonball themselves into their ’80s new wave and post-punk influences.
“When the sun drops out of sight, it leaves me free,” Havok sang on new tune “Holy Visions,” sounding fully emancipated on this gray afternoon.
Contact Jason Bracelin at [email protected] or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.