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DevilDriver : Brooklyn Bowl, Las Vegas NV, July 15
DevilDriver Brings the Strike and Kill Tour to Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas
DevilDriver brought the Strike and Kill Tour to Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas on August 15 with Cultus Black, Ov Sulfur, and Upon A Burning Body.
Four bands. No slow build. No clean edges. Just a Saturday night metal show inside Brooklyn Bowl with the floor getting worse as the night went on.
Cultus Black opened with a Midwest Slipknot vibe. Masks, heavy guitars, industrial grime, and a frontman who looked like he came out of a factory fire. The sound was ugly and direct, with enough stomp in it to wake up the early crowd.
Ov Sulfur came next and brought the local damage. Las Vegas blackened deathcore, low guitars, blast sections, and Ricky Hoover’s vocals cutting through the room. They did not play like a local opener. They played like a band carrying the darker side of the bill.
Upon A Burning Body followed and turned the floor into a Texas metalcore fight club. Big grooves, gang vocals, breakdowns, and Danny Leal working the crowd like a man who knows exactly when the room is about to move. Their songs have that bar-fight bounce to them. Brooklyn Bowl answered with circle pits, shoulders, elbows, and people pushing toward the middle.
Then DevilDriver came out and took it back to groove.
Dez Fafara still looks healthy and metal AF. Black clothes, hard stare, no wasted motion. The band came in fast and mean, but the groove is still the weapon. DevilDriver has always lived in that space between death metal bite and pit-ready rhythm. Not pretty. Not polished. Not trying to be anything soft.
The new album, Strike and Kill, fits its name. The title alone sounds like a warning label. The songs keep the band in familiar territory: speed, pressure, low-end swing, and Dez barking over the top like he is trying to start a prison riot. Brooklyn Bowl had a packed floor. Sweat on the rail. People moshing.
DevilDriver are not a band for standing still. Their best material makes people react with their whole body. Heads down. Fists up. Boots sliding across the floor. When the band locks into that groove, the crowd moves.
Cultus Black brought masks and industrial dirt. Ov Sulfur brought blackened deathcore from Vegas. Upon A Burning Body brought Texas swing and breakdowns. DevilDriver brought the groove metal blade.
By the end, Brooklyn Bowl looked chewed up. Shirts soaked. Hair stuck to faces. People bleeding. The kind of crowd that leaves with sore knees, ringing ears, and gleeful souls.
Instagram / Websites / Links
DevilDriver
Instagram: @devildriver
Website: https://devildriver.com/
New album: https://devildriver.bandcamp.com/album/strike-and-kill
Rockabilia merch: https://rockabilia.com/collections/devil-driver
Cultus Black
Instagram: @cultusblack
Website: https://cultusblack.com/
Links: https://linktr.ee/cultusblack
Ov Sulfur
Instagram: @ovsulfur
Website / Links: https://linktr.ee/ovsulfur
Bandcamp: https://ovsulfur.bandcamp.com/music
Upon A Burning Body
Instagram: @uponaburningbodyofficial
Website: https://www.uabbtx.com/
Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas
Instagram: @brooklynbowllv
Website: https://www.brooklynbowl.com/las-vegas
Rockabilia
Instagram: @rockabilia
Website: https://rockabilia.com/
Tag Line
@devildriver @cultusblack @ovsulfur @uponaburningbodyofficial @brooklynbowllv @rockabilia
Hashtags
#DevilDriver
#CultusBlack
#OvSulfur
#UponABurningBody
#BrooklynBowlLV
#LasVegasConcerts
#MetalShows
#GrooveMetal
#Deathcore
#Metalcore
#NapalmRecords
#Rockabilia
#SpiralOutPodcast
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DevilDriver at Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas Review
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DevilDriver brought the Strike and Kill Tour to Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas with Cultus Black, Ov Sulfur, and Upon A Burning Body for a loud Saturday night metal show.
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Mayday Parade Downtown Freemont, August 8 2026
Mayday Parade Turns Fremont Street Into a Pop-Punk Mess

Mayday Parade played Fremont Street Experience on August 8 as part of the Downtown Rocks free concert series. The show was at the 3rd Street Stage, right in the middle of downtown Las Vegas.
That is not a normal place to watch a band. There are casinos on both sides, bartenders yelling, tourists cutting through the crowd, zipliners overhead, and people holding drinks the size of flower vases. Fremont Street was already loud before Mayday Parade walked out.
The band came out to a packed street and went straight into it. Big choruses. Fast drums. Bright guitars. Derek Sanders had the crowd with him early, and the front of the stage turned into a pop-punk singalong almost immediately.
Mayday Parade songs are built for half heartbreak, half bad decision, all chorus. The sad parts do not stay quiet for long. They turn into people yelling the words back with their friends, strangers, and whoever happened to stop walking through Fremont at the right time.
The band is still in its Sweet / Sad / Sugar era, with Sugar closing out the trilogy this summer. The newer material sits next to the older songs without changing what Mayday Parade does best. They write songs that sound clean on record, then get louder, sweatier, and messier when a crowd takes them over.
The older songs pulled the biggest reactions. “Jamie All Over” is almost unfair in Las Vegas. A song with Las Vegas already baked into it, played under the Fremont canopy, surrounded by neon and people screaming the words back. “Oh Well, Oh Well” and “Three Cheers for Five Years” brought out the same kind of reaction: hands up, voices cracking, no one pretending to be cool.
This was not a theater show. It was a street show. That matters here. Fremont Street added noise, heat, movement, and the usual downtown weirdness. Mayday Parade did not have to fight it. They just played through it.
By the end, the 3rd Street Stage looked like someone dropped a pop-punk festival into the middle of a casino district. Fans up front knew every word. People in the back caught pieces of the choruses. Tourists stopped and stayed. Downtown got louder.
Mayday Parade has been doing this long enough for the songs to belong to different parts of people’s lives. Some people found them in high school. Some found them later. Some probably heard them for the first time on Fremont Street with a drink in their hand.
For one night, downtown Las Vegas was loud, crowded, sweaty, and a little ridiculous. Mayday Parade sounded right at home under the lights.
Mayday Parade
Instagram: @maydayparadeband
Website: https://maydayparade.com/
Fremont Street Experience
Instagram: @fremontstreet
Website: https://vegasexperience.com/
Downtown Rocks: https://vegasexperience.com/dtr/
Rockabilia
Instagram: @rockabilia
Website: https://rockabilia.com/
Mayday Parade merch: https://rockabilia.com/collections/mayday-parade
Rockabilia has a Mayday Parade merch collection page.
@maydayparadeband @fremontstreet @rockabilia
#MaydayParade
#FremontStreetExperience
#DowntownRocks
#LasVegasConcerts
#DowntownLasVegas
#PopPunk
#Emo
#Rockabilia
#SpiralOutPodcast
Mayday Parade at Fremont Street Experience Las Vegas Review
Mayday Parade brought pop-punk singalongs, downtown chaos, and a packed Fremont Street crowd to the Downtown Rocks free concert series in Las Vegas.
mayday-parade-fremont-street-experience-las-vegas-review
Mayday Parade Las Vegas
Mayday Parade Fremont Street Experience
Mayday Parade review
Mayday Parade setlist
Downtown Rocks Las Vegas
Fremont Street concerts
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Las Vegas pop punk
Las Vegas emo concerts
Rockabilia Mayday Parade merch
Death Cab for Cutie: Las Vegas ,The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas August 6
Death Cab for Cutie Builds Through Grief at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las VegasLala Lala started the night with darker indie rock, electronics, and Lillie West’s voice out front. The songs moved slow and shoegazy. There was a nervous current in the set, with guitars and electronics holding the space before Death Cab walked out.
Death Cab opened with “Riptides,” then moved into “Roman Candles” and “The New Year.” That first run put the new record beside older songs right away.
The I Built You A Tower songs sat at the center of the night. “Punching the Flowers,” “I Built You a Tower,” “Pep Talk,” “Stone Over Water,” “How Heavenly a State,” and “Trap Door” all came through the set. These songs deal with grief like something put away in a room that keeps leaking under the door. Death Cab has always written well about distance and absence. It sounded like the same wound years later.
The older songs came in clean. “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” and “Black Sun” brought in the darker side of the band. “Photobooth” reached back to the early years. “Summer Skin” pulled from Plans. “I Will Possess Your Heart” and “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” became the obvious singalong, with the crowd singing every word.
“Cath...” and “Crooked Teeth” brought the pace back up. “You Are a Tourist,” “Here to Forever,” and “Soul Meets Body” closed the main set with the band moving between eras without turning the night into a greatest-hits handout.
The encore started with “Title Track,” then “A Movie Script Ending” and “Marching Bands of Manhattan” followed. “Transatlanticism” closed the night. “Transatlanticism” is still one of the band’s best songs about distance. It starts small, repeats, builds, and keeps stretching until the ending opens up. That night showed you can build a tower, a room, a wall, or a clean little place to put grief, but it still finds air.
I Built You A Tower brought the grief to the surface, and the catalog showed how long that subject has been sitting inside this band.
BLOG INFO / LINKS / SEO
Artist / Venue Tags
Death Cab for Cutie
Instagram: @deathcabforcutie
Website: https://www.deathcabforcutie.com/
Lala Lala
Instagram: @lillielala_music
Website: https://www.lalabandlala.com/
The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas
Instagram: @virginhotelslv
Website: https://virginhotelslv.com/venue/the-theater/
Rockabilia
Instagram: @rockabilia
Website: https://rockabilia.com/
Tag Line
@deathcabforcutie @lillielala_music @virginhotelslv @rockabilia
Rockabilia Death Cab for Cutie Merch
Death Cab for Cutie merch is available through Rockabilia:
https://rockabilia.com/collections/death-cab-for-cutie
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Death Cab for Cutie at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas Review
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Death Cab for Cutie brought the I Built You A Tower tour to The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas with Lala Lala opening and a setlist built around the new album and the band’s catalog.
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#VirginHotelsLV
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#SpiralOutPodcast

Sleep Token turned a Utah arena date into something closer to initiation than a concert.
Maverik Center, West Valley City, Utah — October 5, 2025
I drove eight hours from Las Vegas for Sleep Token.
The show had already started before I got there.
That is how this band operates now. Not with a standard rollout. Not with a clean press cycle. They build anticipation the way secret societies recruit. Symbols. Houses. Clues. Hidden pages. The Show Me How to Dance Forever campaign pulled fans into a puzzle before the tour ever hit the road, splitting them into factions and turning the build-up into participation instead of promotion. By the time the Utah date arrived, the room had already been activated.
You could see it outside Maverik Center.
People were there early. Very early. They were trading trinkets, planning outfits, meeting strangers, treating the parking lot and the line as part of the ritual instead of dead time before doors. The Utah fan thread for that night was full of the same energy: outfits, parking, meetups, gifts, logistics, anticipation. This band has built a community that behaves more like a congregation than a crowd.
The easy word is cult.
The more accurate word is organized devotion.
Sleep Token draws the kind of audience most heavy bands spend years trying to reach and never do. There were plenty of women there. Plenty of younger fans. Plenty of people who did not arrive through the usual metal pipeline. The room was broad without turning anonymous. The fanbase around this band has obsession in it, but it also has openness. That combination is harder to build than the masks, the lore, or the sigils.
It comes from the music.
Sleep Token writes songs that can turn on a dime without losing control. They can move from tenderness to punishment inside the same arrangement and make both sides land harder. There is sensuality in the material. There is weight in it. There is restraint. Then there is impact. A lot of heavy bands can switch dynamics. Sleep Token makes the switch itself part of the hook.
When the stage came up, the whole thing made sense.
The Even In Arcadia production was built as a stone world. Tiers. Ruins. Height changes. Banners. Water pouring from above. Not a generic arena backdrop. A full environment. The broader 2025 run introduced a giant waterfall effect, oversized sigils, floral detail, and a scale built for arenas and festival headlines rather than clubs or theaters. In Utah, the set read as a temple, a fortress, and a fantasy map all at once. Zelda architecture rebuilt for an arena floor.
Every player had a place inside it.
II elevated and framed separately. Espera above the main action. III and IV working the lower levels. Vessel at the center, moving through the architecture instead of simply standing in front of it. The production gave each part of the band a visual role without overcrowding the stage picture. Clean design. Smart use of height. Enough detail to build a world, not so much that it turned into clutter.
They opened with “Look to Windward.” Good choice. Long build. Controlled pressure. Then “The Offering” and “Vore” took the room from anticipation into force. That opening run did the job fast. Whatever lazy assumptions still exist about Sleep Token being an internet phenomenon first and a live band second do not survive contact with the room. The band sounded huge in Utah. Not vague. Not smoothed over. Huge. The low end had real weight. The guitars bit harder than they do on record. The whole set carried more punch than their studio precision suggests.
The middle of the set showed why the band has exploded.
“Emergence.” “Alkaline.” “Hypnosis.” “Provider.” “Rain.”
That run covered almost everything they do well. Tension. Release. Hook writing. Atmosphere. Space. Crush. Seduction. Sleep Token understands contrast better than most bands working at this size. They know exactly when to strip a song down and exactly when to drive it into the floor.
Then “Caramel” arrived and sharpened the central contradiction around the whole band.
Four men in masks. Full costumes. Lore stacked on lore. A frontman who does not speak in the usual way and a fanbase that still projects unusual intimacy onto him. That is the trick they pulled off. Privacy on one side. Emotional access on the other. The masks create distance. The songs erase it. “Caramel” sits right inside that contradiction. Fame, projection, performance, self-protection. Watching that song land in a building full of people who clearly believe they know this band, even while knowing almost nothing concrete about them, gave it extra force.
Vessel came off genuine all night.
Not cold. Not swallowed by the character. Genuine.
That is a delicate line with a concept band. Too much detachment and the whole thing turns mechanical. Too much exposure and the mystique collapses. Sleep Token stays in the pocket. Vessel gives enough through voice, movement, and pacing to keep the human center intact. You never lose the sense that there is a real person inside all that structure, carrying songs that ask for real vulnerability while standing in full ceremonial armor.
The rest of the band looked comfortable together. Comfortable is the right word. Not stiff. Not overly choreographed. Not trapped inside the production. Comfortable enough to enjoy the scale of what they built and confident enough to let the songs carry the show. That chemistry is part of what keeps Sleep Token from collapsing under their own concept. Plenty of bands can invent mythology. Far fewer can stand inside it without looking ridiculous. This band can.
Then came the closing stretch.
“The Summoning” still hit as an event. The song has been memed, clipped, dissected, thirsted over, and run into the ground online, and it still landed live with real force. “Aqua Regia” cleaned the palette without draining the tension. “Granite” kept the pulse moving. “Thread the Needle” reached back and held up. “Damocles” and “Infinite Baths” closed the night on a note that suggested expansion rather than conclusion.
I didn’t leave impressed by the branding. I left impressed by the discipline. Every part of the night served the same purpose. The crowd arrived ready. The stage expanded the mythology without swallowing the band. The songs moved from tenderness to violence without wasting motion. Nothing in Utah suggested hype outrunning substance. Sleep Token earned that devotion.
The part that interests me most is where this goes next.
Sleep Token is already massive. Social media got them moving faster. TikTok pushed them into new rooms. Streaming numbers turned them into a broader phenomenon. None of that explains the live show by itself. The live show explains the rest. That is the proof. That is why an eight-hour drive from Las Vegas made sense. The songs held up. The production held up. The mystique held up. The audience held up their end too.
Utah made that clear.
This band is not leveling off. It is still climbing.
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8 Hour Drive to Arcadia: Sleep Token in Utah Review
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An eight-hour drive from Las Vegas led straight into Sleep Token’s secret-society world as the band brought Even In Arcadia to Utah with a stage built like a temple and a crowd ready for ritual.
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Children of the Korn Led a Night That Showed Why Tribute Bands Still Matter
House of Blues Las Vegas hosted an all-ages heavy bill on March 28 with Guerrilla Radio, Children of the Korn, Rose of Sharyn, and The Far Worst. It was the kind of lineup that gets dismissed too easily by people who only care about the original names on the poster. Being in the room, the point felt obvious. Tribute bands still serve a real purpose. They make this music reachable.
The real bands are bigger, more expensive, harder to get close to, and for a lot of people harder to bring kids into. A night like this cuts through all of that. You still get the riffs, the volume, the crowd response, and the songs people grew up on. You get a room full of parents passing that music down in real time. You get kids learning what these bands feel like in a live setting without the price tag and distance that usually come with legacy acts.
That was one of the strongest things about this show. There were plenty of kids there with parents who clearly came up on Korn, Rage, and Killswitch. That is part of what makes tribute nights worth paying attention to. They are not just nostalgia machines. They are entry points.
The whole bill worked from that angle. Guerrilla Radio brought the Rage Against the Machine side of the flyer, Rose of Sharyn carried the Killswitch Engage weight, and The Far Worst gave the night original local blood in between the tributes. The balance helped. It kept the show from turning into a costume exercise and gave the room a little variety in tone and texture.
Guerrilla Radio hit “Bombtrack,” which immediately gave the set some force. That song does not need a long runway. It lands fast, and the room reacted like it should. Rose of Sharyn brought in “The End of Heartache,” which was the right kind of pull for a bill like this. It widened the night beyond straight nĂ¼-metal and gave the lineup some metalcore lift.
Children of the Korn were the standout.
They opened with bagpipes, which is exactly the kind of move that tells the room they understand the assignment before the full band even kicks in. From there they pulled from different eras of Korn instead of leaning on the safest, most obvious version of the catalog. “Clown” brought in the dirtier early edge. “Coming Undone” gave the set a later-era hook that kept it from feeling boxed into one album or one generation of fans.
That mix mattered to the room in a practical way. Older fans got songs tied to the version of Korn they grew up with. Younger fans still had tracks they recognized. It made the set feel broader and more alive than a nostalgia run built only for one age group.
From where I was shooting, Children of the Korn felt like the biggest band on the bill. They had the strongest crowd response, the most complete energy, and the clearest sense of momentum. The songs hit with the right amount of grime and bounce, and the crowd stayed with them. Every band did well. They were the one that separated themselves.
That is the value of a show like this. It is not trying to replace the original thing. It is giving people access to the songs, the feeling, and the culture around them in a way that is local, affordable, and close enough to touch. For parents, it is an easier way to bring kids into heavy music. For younger fans, it is a way in. For photographers, it is a room where expressions still read, movement still matters, and the whole night is not swallowed by distance and security barricades.
House of Blues was the right room for it. Small enough to keep the energy concentrated. Big enough to let the bands hit with some weight. On a bill built around Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Killswitch Engage, and one hard rock band from Las Vegas carrying the original side of the night, the balance worked.
Children of the Korn left the deepest impression. More importantly, the whole night made a solid case for why tribute shows are still worth showing up for. They keep the songs moving. They keep younger crowds connected to the bands that shaped their parents. They make heavy music feel reachable again.
Thrice — September 18, 2026 — Bottom Lounge Before Thrice took the Riot Fest stage Saturday afternoon, they packed into Chicago’s Bottom L...
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Kris West is a Las Vegas-based filmmaker, photographer, chef, media producer, and the architect behind Spiral Out Network — a creative platform living at the intersection of music, film, food, and art.
Email: kris@spiraloutnetwork.com
Instagram: @kriswest222
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