There are a ton of heavy hitters topping the bill at 2025’s When We Were Young festival, presented by 7-Eleven— from blink-182 to Weezer to the Offspring. Still, we’d lobby that they’re technically not the heaviest bands making it out to Sin City this weekend.
Set to take place October 18th-19th at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, When We Were Young will be hosting more than 50 acts this year. And while the fest has typically leaned more into the pop-punk and emo side of things, this year the lineup veers a bit heavier with horror-themed metalcore mavens and big-time beatdown crews.
Keep your eyes peeled for Revolver’s coverage of the festival all weekend on Veeps, the exclusive backstage partner. But ahead of the big event, we’re highlighting the following five acts as the most aurally, spiritually and/or physically intense sets to see this weekend.
Drain
Drain are undeniably fun to see in concert, the kind of positive-spirited live entity that inspires people to perform ecstatic pile-ons just to sing along with vocalist Sammy Ciaramitaro, or maybe crowdsurf atop an inflatable shark with reckless glee. But don’t get it twisted: The Santa Cruz outfit can still turn it out heavy.
While Ciaramitaro is slowly introducing more melody into his vocal style — between Drain’s Descendents cover and the new pop-punk-ish “Who’s Having Fun” — you can’t help but still feel the weight behind celebratory crossover crushers like “Nights Like These” and “Stealing Happiness from Tomorrow.”
Knocked Loose
Knocked Loose have made a name for themselves as one of the most dynamically destructive modern hardcore bands out there through devoutly death-mangled guitar riffs and chest-bursting beats that run from zero to 60 in less than millisecond.
Uniquely screeching vocalist Bryan Garris is an elemental force on heaters like “Suffocate,” and just like past high-profile fest slots at Coachella, he’s bound to get the Vegas crowd going with a round of unconventional arfs.
Knocked Loose won’t go onstage before they’re supposed to, but be prepared to get wrecked as soon as they do.
Kublai Khan TX
The Texas-made monoliths have been on a tear across venues this fall, and their current headlining tour swings through Las Vegas for a pair of sure-to-be especially punishing performances.
Give credit where it’s due: The all-thrust heft of Matt Honeycutt’s extra-hardcore shouting voice could instantly fill and pop an industrial-sized hot water bottle, while the brick-batted riffage on recent single “The Mountain of Corsicana” and the blunt-bashed sounds of last year’s Exhibition of Prowess have also codified what many heavy-music fans already believed: “Khan is king.”
Loathe
Loathe’s sound has the propensity to whiplash you back and forth between distorted-but-dreamy shoegaze, bleak-stomped metalcore intensity and, in the case of 2025 single “Gifted Every Strength,” the occasional extended jazz-fusion finale. That aggressive evolution makes for a dizzying and diverse onstage display, and fans love them for it.
Sure, vocalist Kadeem France and guitarist Erik Bickerstaffe can lull you into a false sense of security while crooning on the smoothest parts of the set, but don’t be surprised when the Liverpool quartet gore the crowd with a megaton blast of groove.
Sunami
It’s hard to not get swept up in the uncompromising heaviness San Jose, California, mainstays Sunami bring to the stage.
To-the-point beatdowns are the name of the game, and the West Coast wrecking crew will be raining down an onslaught of beef-knuckled mosh riffs, terror-slammed two-steps and mean-mugged lyrical combativeness.
A force of nature like no other, Sunami are bound to tear it up.