Sick New World returned to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on April 25, 2026, after a year-long hiatus, picking up right where it left off with a packed, multi-stage setup that kept things moving all day. With more than 50 bands spread across four stages, the festival once again leaned into its marathon format, giving fans plenty of options at any given moment and the freedom to move between sets and discover something new. Beyond the stages, there was just as much happening around the grounds. The Rockstar Energy Vert Ramp ran skateboarding demos throughout the day and drew steady crowds between sets, while the Korn Coffee pop-up had a line from open to close. The merch tent remained one of the biggest hubs on site, and this year, the layout felt noticeably improved as lines were better contained and didn’t spill as heavily into the viewing areas near the Spiral and Diablo stages, which made a difference once the crowds filled in.

With so much happening at once, the day wasn’t about a single flow so much as it was choosing your adventure through the lineup. Sick New World still leaned heavily into nu-metal nostalgia, but the range was wide, from legacy acts like System of a Down, Korn, and Marilyn Manson to mid-era staples like Bring Me the Horizon, AFI, Kittie, and Evanescence, alongside newer artists like Violent Vira, Chained Saint, and Speed of Light. Substream had the chance to catch a handful of sets throughout the day, taking a closer look at some of the performances we were able to see firsthand.

 

Speed of Light got things started early with a fast, no-frills set that did exactly what an opener should. People were still making their way in, but the early crowd had something worth catching right out of the gate.

 

Violent Vira pulled a solid turnout not long after, bringing a darker, industrial-leaning set that fit right in with the vibe of the day and drew people in early across stages.

Failure offered something completely different with a more atmospheric set with known tracks like “Heliotropic” and “Another Space Song” as well as songs like “A Way Down” and “The Air’s on Fire” off of their most recent album. It was the kind of set you could step into for a change of pace without losing the thread of the day.

Kittie’s set pulled from across their catalog, opening with “Fire” and moving through “Spit,” “We Are the Lamb,” “Brackish,” and “Mouthful of Poison.” One of the bigger moments came with “Suck,” which they played live for the first time in over two decades, and the crowd definitely reacted to it.

AFI delivered a solid mix of their darker, more melodic tracks, with “Miss Murder” and “Silver and Cold” really standing out. Davey Havok’s energy was on another level, constantly jumping off the drum platform and feeding off the crowd. Their set kept a steady crowd the entire time and didn’t lose momentum for a second.

Before Coal Chamber even hit the stage, the crowd was already chanting the lyrics to “Sway.” They opened with the song immediately, and the reaction was instant, like the entire pit had been waiting for that exact moment. From there, they kept things tight with “Loco” and “Fiend,” leaning hard into that late ‘90s nu-metal sound

Marilyn Manson’s set stuck pretty close to the essentials, but it still landed really well, especially with “The Dope Show,” “Sweet Dreams “and “The Beautiful People” getting some of the biggest reactions. The stage setup with the light-up crosses gave everything a really striking backdrop. It fit the mood of the whole set perfectly, especially during songs like “Disposable Teens” and “mOBSCENE” and Marilyn Manson looks like he hasn’t aged a day since the 90s/early 2000s, like he just stepped right out of that era.

Evanescence drew one of the bigger singalong crowds of the day, especially during “Bring Me to Life,” “Going Under,” and “Lithium.” It was one of those sets where you could hear the crowd just as much as the band, and we even got to watch the sunset roll in as they played, which made everything feel a bit more cinematic. They also marked a standout moment by performing the live debut of their new single “Who Will You Follow.”

Korn came in later in the evening with a set built around the songs everyone knows, opening with “Blind” and moving through staples like “Twist” and “Got the Life.” During “Shoots and Ladders,” Jonathan Davis did the usual bagpipe intro before the band kicked in. A standout moment was their performance of the song “Proud,” marking the first time it’s been performed live with Head since 1999, and then “Reward the Scars” also made its live debut. The set ended with crowd favorite, “Freak on a Leash.”

 This was my first time seeing a Danny Elfman show, and honestly, I didn’t really know what to expect going in. I’ve always been familiar with his film scores and all those iconic songs from movies, but I wasn’t sure how that would translate at a metal festival. Turns out, it worked way better than I ever would’ve guessed. What really made it hit was how stacked his band was. He had three touring members from the Nine Inch Nails “Peel It Back” lineup, Stu Brooks, Robin Finck, and Josh Freese, plus Reba Meyers from Code Orange, and then Steve Bartek from Elfman’s longtime Oingo Boingo days, conducting the orchestra. The set itself was basically a highlight reel of his career. He played “This Is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, the Beetlejuice theme, the main titles from Netflix’s Wednesday, the 1989 Batman theme, and even The Simpsons theme song. And then he closed everything out with Oingo Boingo’s “No One Lives Forever,” which felt like the perfect way to tie it all together.

System of a Down closed out the night on the main stage with a packed crowd spilling all the way back. They ran through a stacked set of hits and fan favorites like “Prison Song,” “Chop Suey!,” “Lonely Day,” “Hypnotize,” and “B.Y.O.B.” One of the biggest highlights was hearing “Aerials.” The crowd was absolutely deafening on that one, and it was one of those moments that just hits different live. Another cool moment was during the song “Radio/Video” it started raining, which ended up adding a really awesome layer to everything with the lighting and lasers cutting through it. It honestly looked like the rain was a paid actor.