2025.05.17 - Welcome To Rockville

[RYG4R]

On 5/18/2025 at 12:46 AM, JZLP-Benningstrong said:

BRING BACK THE HIP HOP MEDLEY

STEP UP/NOBODY'S/ITS FUCKING GOING DOWN

 

man the medley kicked ass.

 

i love RTN but its overplayed.

 

Doubtful that they might bring back the hip-hop medley. They probably sold the guitars that they used from that era. the guitar tone won't be the same anymore.

[YRQRM0]

Color me very surprised that LYF got played live 

 

I really felt like it and Unshatter would never see representation beyond their YouTube visualizers. They clearly both represent sounds that didn’t really fit the album imo 

Now I’m wondering what the next surprise will be. All for nothing, friendly fire, lost in “full” and LYF were all surprises for me

 

[Cesar656]

10 hours ago, RYG4R said:

 

Doubtful that they might bring back the hip-hop medley. They probably sold the guitars that they used from that era. the guitar tone won't be the same anymore.

They literally got new guitars for WFTE, the tone of the medley aint that unique at all, im sure with a couple of calls they can get free guitars that fit perfectly

[LPLStaff]

Wow what an experience this show was. Unlike Sonic Temple which is pretty condensed and in a city, Rockville entails much more walking since it's at a race track. With 95 degrees expected all day, we knew for a 12 hour day we were in for a long one. From the car to the entrance gate it was already over a mile of walking. We kept up best we could with water all day long and took breaks when we tried to escape the sun - shout out to the Metallica Blackened whiskey tent for some shade mid-day. The sun from 2-5pm was pretty brutal and this is probably the hottest show I've ever been to.

 

They booked this day perfectly for bands because Hoobastank, POD, and Incubus are who exactly we want to see before LP and all 3 bands absolutely nailed it. We started with Hooba and people were already having heat exhaustion in the crowd and EMS was having to come get them over the barricade. Both Hooba and POD crushed their sets and played very well.

 

Throughout the day we wandered through the other stages at times if needed, like the Hollywood Undead set was surprisingly quite good. Taking Back Sunday was a bit of a letdown as Adam's voice just seems off to me. There is an entire genre of "new rock" of bands like Pierce the Veil, Bear tooth, I Prevail, Bad Omens, Sleeping With Sirens, etc - all of that is so, so bad to me and thankfully all of that type of stuff is pretty easy to avoid at shows like this. But you need that stuff to sell tickets to the teenage fans and early 20s fans it looks like. I'd much rather have Rise Against, Seether, Chevelle and those types of bands all day - Jimmy Eat World is a phenomenal one - than those newer rock acts but that's just how it goes, you need something for everyone. Hooba and POD singlehandedly blew all of the 5 grandson sets away I've seen before LP by miles. 

 

One thing about these festivals is the logistics are really well done. They put electric fans up in as many places as they can for people to cool off. There were a ton of free water stands, they discounted bottled water to $2 and allowed re-entry into the show so people could go cool off when they wanted to. Food and drink lines were non-existent with a million booths set up. So, they do a great job with all of this stuff.

 

We got a good spot for Incubus that allowed us out of the way of the crowdsurfers and to be in a good spot for the sound. Alex came out and stood by Chad from Mudvayne near us to watch the Incubus set. Incubus played one of the best sets I've seen in a while - absolutely GREAT performance and they crushed it. Brandon sounds incredible and they even hit some deep cuts with Vitamin, Sick Sad Little World, and The Warmth. The newer girl bassist they have is quite solid too. Overall just an amazing Incubus set and it makes me really miss them touring with LP. 10/10 from them. Mike, Emily, and Joe watched on the side of the stage for their set. Incubus is at the top of their game right now and could easily headline one of these nights of the show but I'm glad they were before LP because I have no idea how people could do 12+ hours of this multiple days in a row with the heat and amount of walking. My watch logged 8 miles by the time LP came on - crazy.

 

The Rockville box office told us at 12:00 p.m. that Saturday sold so many tickets that they far exceeded their allocation of Saturday wristbands, and extra Saturday wristbands, so at noon they moved to selling and giving out Thursday wristbands that they just activated for Saturday. That means they sold a TON of tickets for the Saturday show, which is usually the highest attended day of a festival anyway across the board, but they must have been a bit shocked at this year's numbers. Also I wanted to point out that Friday set the largest crowd ever for Rockville for a headliner and that was with the Green Day set. So, this year's festival brought an insane amount of people for them and I'm happy to hear it because these festivals are incredibly well run across the board.

 

LP came on and what do you expect - they of course played another great (and loud) festival set. The issue at some of the shows has been the guitar mix being really quiet (Greenville) and samples not being loud. I think this has to do with where you are in the crowd and it's even more noticeable at the 360 shows due to how they set the sound up. Festivals and stadiums are fantastic spots to watch this new LP lineup play because the sound is loud as hell and they crank the volume on every instrument. From the get go, you could hear Joe's scratching on the show intro very loudly and I knew we were in for a good one.

 

Emily looked quite nervous at the start for a few songs, most noticeably on New Divide. She seems to have been touching her ears a few times and then looked down at the lyrics and wasn't fully "on top of" the microphone. After one of those early songs, the band took a break and Mike said something like "we're pausing for a second" (or whatever he said) - the Rockville comments online made it sound like maybe Emily and Mike couldn't hear themselves too well to start. Well, from that point, they must have fixed it because she was on fire the rest of the show - check out One Step Closer and Faint. She was blowing it up on stage.

 

Immediately thought something was up when Waiting for the End got skipped, but thought they'd maybe sub in Points or Keys or something in the encore, or hit a mid-set Given Up. Even though that sounds odd for a replacement for WFTE, of course. 

 

Wanted to also reiterate once again that Lying From You early in the set and Two Faced early in the set need to keep happening. This is no time for a Cut the Bridge spot in the show - play Cut the Bridge later. You want big big rock energy to start and you get that with the Somewhere I Belong, Lying From You, Crawling, Two Faced run to open. It's a noticeable energy with that run and the band rocks it. Then New Divide and Emptiness Machine? Fantastic.

 

Up From the Bottom is a banger live. Have really enjoyed all the performances of it lately. And then A Place For My Head came out of nowhere. I've been able to at least enjoy the Hybrid Theory songs more with Alex's guitar stuff going on, so I enjoyed this APFMH performance. APFMH into OSC is old school Linkin Park... they should totally keep doing that. Good run of stuff there. Lost rocked it, Overflow was awesome yet again and now I fully see why LP is going with Overflow much more than Good Things Go - because Overflow is a VERY good live song.

 

With the encore, I thought again maybe Points comes after Papercut or something. The second Joe played one small sample after Papercut, I knew something was up. But I didn't guess a new song - I thought maybe something obscure from the last 6-7 months that I couldn't think of that they'd play. A rock song. Then Mike goes into the speech on "firsts" on the tour and they played Let You Fade. What a great live song that was for its first performance... quite strong. And heavy. They looked like they had rehearsed it a million times. Really enjoyed the debut.

 

Heavy is the Crown is one, like Two Faced, that the new fans LOVE and people really get into that one. Both songs + Emptiness Machine will likely be staples in the LP sets for a long time. As they should be. They all 3 rock live. Bleed It Out had the There They Go verse which A LOT OF PEOPLE around me knew all the words for. Mike said it was for old school fans, but like, 10 people around me knew the whole verse. Now that's crazy as hell considering There They Go is a Rising Tied bonus track, but honestly a We Major song first.

 

Other notable things - Mike gave a speech about Optimus Prime and asked if he was in the crowd at this show. He reposted my photo on his Instagram of Optimus at the Sonic Temple show. Well as he is saying this, the girl directly to my right started talking about, like, "Optimus landed just behind me at Sonic Temple." I overheard her and said "HUH?!" - I pulled my phone out to find pics and videos of that moment on What I've Done last weekend and she was the PERSON RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. lol. What the fuck are the odds the exact same 2 people are standing by each other 2 shows in a row, at festivals in different parts of the country, in crowds of 50, 60k? That blew my mind.

 

For those of you around a while, you know Trip in the LP community, and we met Billy, a great friend of Nick Kramar's, too. We all watched bands together all day and they were so much fun during the Incubus and LP sets. And what about Amit, from the UK, somehow finding us 5 minutes before LP in the middle of the crowd and jamming with us? That was really really cool.

 

ALL IN ALL - Linkin Park has kicked ass at these two festivals and they should play them as often as they can (every 3-4 years) because the quality of their show is really high, the crowds are massive so the band delivers big time, and you get to see them on huge stages. Plus all the other bands. Despite what the Internet may say, both crowds were massive and they have a really big draw in the USA. Ticket-wise for the summer/fall, they probably did themselves a favor by playing these two rock festivals because they likely sold some headline show tickets from these performances by winning over casual fans. Danny Wimmer (festival creator/CEO) is at it again commenting all over Rockville socials about how good the LP set was... I'm sure he told them he'd love to have them back ASAP in-person, so it wouldn't surprise me to see them on his Louder Than Life or Aftershock lineups one day. He absolutely loved the two shows.

 

Interestingly I think I have enjoyed the festival shows for LP more than the arena shows because of how large the show is/how loud it is/how many people are there. I don't think I would have said that 10-15 years ago. And for once I don't feel like I am missing anything substantial in a 90 minute set versus a headline set. I know that's a lot of music, but you cut the Joe solo, Mike solo, and a few rotation spots (which are now mostly new songs so it's not a massive loss to me) and here we are. Also, LP went over by about 10 minutes on their 90 minute festival set (which I doubt Wimmer cares at all about or is strict on for LP) so let's see what happens in Europe when they are almost all 90 minute sets there too. Incubus also went over before LP. Hollywood Undead too. I like all of that because honestly no bands need over 30 minutes to set up a stage... play as much as you can even if you go over by 1-2 songs. LP finished at 12:01 a.m. (scheduled for 11:50 p.m.) which is good.

 

FUN USA leg... never imagined we'd get so many song debuts. Up From The Bottom, Stained, Cut The Bridge, IGYEIH, Let You Fade. They nailed this USA run. Looking forward to their return in the fall. But also looking forward to what the future of USA touring looks like for them... this lineup is built for the festivals so they should take advantage of them as much as they can especially as they work to build their new/younger fanbase.

 

I was absolutely exhausted after this one in the 12 hour heat but I never felt BAD - 8+ waters, 4 liquid IV packs, laying down when we needed to and resting, etc saved the day. Anyone who rode the barricade or something all day must have had one hell of a hard time with how hot it was and no escape from the sun. Staying super super super hydrated (and no alcohol) is the key for something like this. Would I do it again? Absolutely, I sure hope LP returns to play it again.

[DelusionsOfAdequacy]

I like these drone videos.

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJzpRcGvG1P/?igsh=MXBqNXhvdGE1Zjd5eQ==

[appukhare]

I don't post here often, but gotta do it for this festival, which was one of the best weekends of my life. I was able to see so many bands I listened to growing up, and found some new bands I can get into in the future. 

 

On Friday, I was bummed that Alice in Chains had to cancel last minute and was expecting that to ruin my experience but that wasn't the case at all. We instead went and saw Kublai Khan TX and Knocked Loose in that time slot and its the heaviest music I've ever heard. We enjoyed it a lot and were a bit late to get to Green Day, which meant we were in the middle of all the crowd surfing and moshing. I had my back to the stage for most of the Green Day set because I was having to watch out for crowd surfers. Someone fell on my head and my neck hurt for all of the night.

 

So on Saturday, I decided to go camp for Linkin Park, so I could secure a spot by the barricade that connects the stage to the sound tent, because fewer crowd surfers end up there. Sitting out there in the heat was horrible, but shout out to the people spraying us with water, and also handing out free water bottles. That kept me well hydrated and cool enough. My friends got me food around the time Incubus was starting, and the night only went better from there.

 

I'm not much into Incubus, but they put on such a solid set with an excellent mix. The bass player had insane chops.

 

And then came Linkin Park. I cried so much during their set, having memories flash up in my head of exactly when/where I was when I used to listen to those songs. The mix was great – you could hear every instrument and the vocals clearly. My favorite performance of the night was probably Let You Fade. I'm trying to improve my photography skills, so I got a used Sony RX100 for this festival, and took so many pictures that will keep this memory alive for me.

 

I'm so grateful that the band is back and I get to see my childhood heroes.