A whirlwind chaotic weekend in Vegas began at the half bowling lanes, half concert venue, Brooklyn Bowl. This Stabbing Westward concert was a sideshow for the first of its name mega one-day festival, Sick New World. Handled much in the same way that last year’s pop-punk extravaganza When We Were Young, complete with more bands than any fan of the genre could possibly get to in one day, Sick New World brought probably three times as much as any given day would need to bear. Stabbing Westward did a great job during their headlining set, balancing the electronic squelch of the industrial music of their time and straight-ahead rock histrionics on “Shame” and “What Do I Have to Do?” Later in the set, they did a fun cover of The Cure’s legendary Crow Soundtrack inclusion “Burn” and dusted off an ancient song “The Only Thing” for a couple of diehard fans getting married. Lead singer Christopher Hall dedicated the song to them after they asked to hear it live not knowing they had followed the band to this show as well.

The day proper began with Max Cavalera’s project Soulfly rendering several classic cuts from the band’s first album including “Bleed” and “Eye for an Eye.”

Flyleaf played in the worst of the 92+ degree afternoon sun. This was the second show back with original singer Lacey Sturm after her original departure from the band eleven years ago. The band sounded in top form and Sturm had lost none of her commanding stage presence and unique voice.

Canadian electronic rockers The Birthday Massacre played a fun set over at one of Sick New World’s dueling side stages. As a fun trick, each of these stages was a rotating stage on a swivel so there were nearly no set changeovers in between each set. Nice in terms of reducing downtime, but total hell when it came to trying to make the most of the experience.

Lacuna Coil followed immediately after The Birthday Massacre swiveling to the front on the opposite side of the Spiral Stage’s rotating stage. The band’s two co-lead singers Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro effortless rocked the crowd in their trademark style of alternating voices.

Mr. Bungle performed a shortened set over at one of the two main stages, the Green Stage. Unlike the set we saw them do the other night, there was only about a lean thirty minutes for them to bring forth their revamped take on their original album The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny. Along with their covers of the Mister Rogers theme “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and Spandau Ballet’s “True,” they did killer takes on “Eracist” and their self-titled album cut, “My Ass is On Fire.” Lead singer Mike Patton hilariously rocked a tank top shirt that said, “I’m not gay, but $20 is $20.”

The Melvins made quick work of their Spiral Stage set, playing three songs in the first six minutes of their set. Lead singer/guitarist King Buzzo rocked a custom muumuu complete with a crown icon on it while this incarnation of the band’s bassist Steven McDonald (of Redd Kross fame) rocked a bright red jumpsuit. The set featured mostly a ‘70s thrash formulation of the band’s sound including a Melvins-fied cover of The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Turnstile captured the attention of at least the photographers on hand, becoming the first set of the festival that drew buzzy attention. A relative newcomer (having only been a band for thirteen years) on this bill compared to the majority acts present, this was a vibrant and modern take on hardcore punk led by Brendan Yates’ snarling vocals.

Evanescence took to the second main stage, the Purple Stage, with lead singer Amy Lee commenting right away how they had a lot of songs to play and not a lot of time. Except for System of a Down at the end of the night, almost every band present had a super short time to crank out what they had (by normal considerations) and in Evanescence’s case it was a lean forty-five minutes to drop in choice cuts like “Made of Stone,” “Going Under,” “Call Me When You’re Sober” and “Use My Voice.” Expectedly, the band ended with their breakthrough hit “Bring Me to Life” but as an added surprise P.O.D. singer Sonny Sandoval joined them to do the rapping parts in the song.

Industrial-era greats KMFDM played in the same timeslot as Evanescence over at the Spiral Stage. Lead singer/programmer Sascha Konietzko and singer Lucia Cifarelli belted out classic songs “Son of a Gun” and “A Drug Against War” alongside more recent track “Rebels in Kontrol.”

Incubus started to bring the day over in to the main event sets. The band aimed for the more rocking side of their material (as opposed to the poppier side they’ve leaned more into in recent years), perhaps in terms of fitting their performance better with the heavier nature of the fair present at the event. “Privilege” was combined with a snippet of Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).” Other choice cuts included “Nice to Know You,” “Circles,” “The Warmth,” “Pardon Me,” “Stellar,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Megalomaniac” and “Drive.”

Deftones delivered one of the biggest responses of the day (up to that point) with their Purple Stage set. Lead singer Chino Moreno and the rest of the band seemed in rare focused form, delivering a high level of intensity from the very first moments of the set. “My Own Summer (Shove It)” brought the ‘90s classic to bear behind guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s staccato melody. Keyboardist/turnablist Frank Delgado brought atmospherics and color on “Tempest.” “Swerve City” was all driving rock energy. Before the set concluded the band dropped in many of their best songs including “Digital Bath,” “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)”, “Change (in the House of Flies)” and “Around the Fur.” They ended strong with the one-two punch of the raw fury “Nosebleed” and frenetic tempo of “Engine No. 9” both from their debut album Adrenaline.

Another giant of the vintage industrial era My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult played all the way on the other side of the festival at the sick stage. This was no short feat, and was definitely one of the weak points of the festival. The two main stages and the two side stages were miles apart. Fine if there was a more staggered lineup, but when there was this much talent all within one twelve-hour stretch, it was a massive chore to hustle between each stage over and over again. The Thrill Kill Kult’s main members Groovie Mann and Buzz McCoy led the band through some their classic songs such as “Burning Dirt,” “Do You Fear (For Your Child)” and “The Days of Swine and Roses.” Groovie Mann sang and cavorted with cocksure swagger courting the sleaze pop image they always cultivated so well.

Ministry was one of the few bands that didn’t get their full set because of a sound problem after the rotating stage had switched their set in. Fifteen very precious minutes were lost due to a problem with microphone connection at the front of the house. However, they did manage to play at least a few killer songs before they ran out of time including “Alert Level,” “Good Trouble,” “N.W.O.,” “Just One Fix” and “Thieves.”

One of the evening’s two headliners, Korn, did a stellar job with their late evening set. Occasionally using a see-through video wall that could be lowered to be in front of them, or raised high in the sky above them, the band hit the stage with ferocious fire. Lead singer Jonathan Davis came out sporting a neon purple tracksuit and sang their excellent song “A.D.I.D.A.S.” It was the first of two cuts from their classic album Life is Peachy as “Good God” came a short time later. “Here to Stay” was another performance that exemplified their trademark knack for using a crescendo to be an excellent song. Further on in the set, they dusted off their unforgettable career-starting cut “Blind.” “Coming Undone” featured a small snippet of Queen’s legendary “We Will Rock You.” “Got the Life” and their ode to raising a middle finger to the pressure from record labels to score a big hit single “Y’all Want a Single” kept the energy up until Davis appeared onstage sporting a set of bagpipes, heralding only one possible thing, their first album hit “Shoots and Ladders.” It’s a small trick, but holy cow does the band get so much mileage out of that one segment featuring bagpipes. It creates the most ominous of tones which the song pays off in spades. Here, they even added a snippet of Metallica’s famous song “One” to the finale. They ended appropriately with their wordless intro “Twist” which led to the finale their biggest hit, “Freak on a Leash.” Such an impressive set from Korn and one that cemented just how much they are a worthy headliner at any festival.

System of a Down closed the night with what can only be described as jaw-dropping clinic in songcraft. Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan succeed against all odds in their music. Unusually sang vocals? Sudden time changes? Grammatically incorrect lyrics? None of it matters one iota in System of a Down’s hands. This set was the defining exhibition on how all the work an artist can muster is worth putting directly into making a song as memorable and replayable as possible. Almost nothing else matters. It can be as strange and out there as anything ever heard, and so long as it has that spark, it will work. They opened with the frantic start-and-stop of “Prison Song.” Unusual vocalization followed on “I-E-A-I-A-I-O” which only became a part of the song’s mounting power. Early career songs “Soil” and “Darts” brought jubilant energy. “B.Y.O.B,” a George W. Bush-era antiwar protest song featured one left turn after another jumping times nimbly. “Needles” features a chant-along chorus that literally says “Pull the tapeworm out of your ass / Hey!”

“Deer Dance” highlights syncopated cymbal-work from Dolmayan and exaggerated vocals from Tankian and a triumphant defiance in the wake of the lyric “Pushing little children / with their fully automatics / They like to push the weak around.” “Bounce” features Tankian screaming “Pogo pogo pogo pogo” and “Psycho” takes a song about a drug addled groupie and somehow through an outro solo by Malakian becomes a tear inducing ballad. “Chop Suey!” enters to the crowd’s delight blending the line between ranted cut and paste conversations with a heartbreaking finale that emits, “Why have you forsaken me?” over and over and again. “Lonely Day” becomes a powerful statement, transcending the grammatically incorrect lyric “The most loneliest day of my life,” through its earnest delivery and ominous final words, “It’s a day that I’m glad I survived,” oddly poignant considering the COVID-19 pandemic we all just went through. “Peephole” is played for the first time since 2013, itself an oddball take on the carnival theatrics Mr. Bungle made famous all the way back in 1991. “Hypnotize” takes a few simple lines about the importance of activism and and an even simpler chorus of “I’m just sitting in my car and / waiting for my girl,” and manages to make for an explosive song.

The band slides their recent songs “Genocidal Humanoidz” and “Protect the Land” their songs recorded after the invasion of Artsakh and their first new songs together since Mezmerize and Hypnotize were initially released. The final six songs are flabbergasting, they’re so good. The world weary longing of “Spiders” gives way to the Frank Zappa-esque demand for open mindedness in “Aerials” where Tankian sings “Aerials / in the sky / When you lose small mind / you free your life.” “Cigaro” takes the lyric “My cock is much bigger than yours” and explodes into one of the band’s most impressive antiwar songs. “Suite-Pee” takes plucked harmonics and sets off an unstoppable freight train ending with the slowdown to let go of “’Cause everyone / needs / a mother / FUCKER.” “Toxicity” aims for sadness, evoking endless corruption and mismanagement shifting between lightly plucked notes and a bombastic chorus. And then finally “Sugar,” their career opening single is a crescendo to end all crescendos, where a seemingly cut-and-paste rant, changes into a build up for the ages. Perhaps about the futility in contemplating depression, the lyrics repeats endlessly, “How do I feel / What Do I say? / In the end it all goes away”

None of it should work. But it all works, exceedingly brilliantly. The band has broken all the rules in the book, and done so masterfully. In this immensely brilliant 31-song set the band demonstrated why they’re one of the few breakout giants of rock music since 1999. The set just kept going adding spellbinding song after spellbinding song. And that’s really the key, the reason so many tens of thousands would sell out a festival like Sick New World seven months in advance is because SOAD has the song. Like, a holy shit, ton of them. Any rock band out there that is serious about what they’re doing and wanting to be a real success needs to tear their approach down to its foundations and examine the numerous daring but successful choices this band makes every time they come up to bat. That’s really what brings joy out of people, the passion, the character all help, but it’s those gobs and gobs of great ideas that keep them coming back.

System of a Down Setlist
Prison Song
I-E-A-I-A-I-O
Soil
Mind (Intro only)
Darts
Soldier Side – Intro
B.Y.O.B.
Genocidal Humanoidz
Needles
Deer Dance
Bounce
Suggestions
Psycho
Chop Suey!
Lonely Day
Question!
Lost in Hollywood
Radio/Video
Peephole
Dreaming (Middle breakdown only)
Hypnotize
ATWA
Forest
Protect the Land
Spiders
Aerials
DAM
Cigaro
Suite-Pee
Toxicity
Sugar

All photos by Raymond Flotat