Taking over Las Vegas this Saturday (April 25), Sick New World is back and better than ever.

Back for another round of chaos, the annual festival will be making its return after a year off in 2025, and you can expect a whole load of brilliance from the best in the heavy music world.

If you’re heading to Las Vegas Festival Grounds this weekend, here’s Rock Sound’s run down of the must-see artists playing throughout the day.

AFI

A band that has drawn a huge amount of influence from the metal scene, they may not be the heaviest band on the line-up, but AFI are certainly some of the most passionate music fans you’ll find at Sick New World this year. Having spent over three decades cultivating their unique blend of punk, goth, emo and post-punk, they’ll be bringing the atmospheric vibes of 2025 album ‘Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…’ to Vegas, alongside all the hardest hitters from elsewhere in their catalogue.

Rock Sound recently caught up with frontman Davey Havok to chat through the creative process behind their latest album, new music plans, and the band’s impressive legacy.

Bring Me The Horizon

If this lot aren’t at the very top of your list already, what are you thinking?!

Absolute kings of the modern metal world, every show Oli Sykes and co. put on is a guaranteed great time. Promising anthemic singalongs fuelled by the likes of ‘LosT’ and ‘DArkSide’ and opportunities to start some bone-crushing pits during ‘Antivist’ and ‘Kingslayer’, you’re in for a real treat here. Plus, with the band celebrating the 20-year anniversary of debut album ‘Count your Blessings’ this year, maybe a little throwback surprise could make its way into the setlist?

Bring Me The Horizon recently took over cinemas across the globe with ‘L.I.V.E. In São Paulo (Live Immersive Visual Experiment)’. In our review of the mammoth event, Rock Sound wrote:

“It all equates to an experience that leaves you as utterly breathless as it does immensely proud. For a band that cut their teeth playing in every pub and club in South Yorkshire that would have them to now being able to deliver a show of this magnitude, 6000 miles away from Sheffield, is quite simply exceptional. For their music, inspired by a very particular lifestyle and culture, to have struck such a chord this deep so far away from home is something that doesn’t happen by chance, and to live up to such an asking when so many now depend on you for support and solace is even more of a challenge. Yet they make it look like it’s second nature.”

You can read our full review of the experience here.

Evanescence

A band whose impact on the heavy music world can never be overstated, Evanescence will be returning to Sick New World shortly before launching into a whole new chapter. With their sixth album ‘Sanctuary’ set to arrive on June 05, you can expect a setlist packed with their biggest hits alongside towering new cuts like ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Who Will You Follow’. Trust us, you won’t want to miss this.

Evanescence’s stirring single ‘Afterlife’ features in the Netflix adaption of the classic Devil May Cry video game series.

Back in December, the band took to the stage at The Game Awards for a blazing performance of the track.

Check it out below:

HEALTH

There’s something infinitely special about bands who choose to operate entirely in their own lane, following nobody’s rulebook but their own. That’s the kind of band that HEALTH are. Embracing experimentation in all of its messiest and ugliest forms, they smash together elements of metal and industrial rock with electronic flashes to form something undoubtedly their own. Showcasing a more uptempo and aggressive side of their sound on latest album ‘Conflict DLC’, prepare for your eardrums to be blasted into another stratosphere when these guys take to the stage.

The band’s latest album serves as a continuation of 2023’s ‘RAT WARS’, which John Famiglietti guided us track by track through the making of.

You can read his personal insight into each of the songs on ‘RAT WARS’ here.

Kittie

An absolutely vital force in the 2000s nu-metal movement, Canada’s Kittie will be bringing the carnage this weekend. Armed with a setlist that is likely to balance cuts from the band’s 2024 comeback album ‘Fire’ with genre-defining tracks such as ‘Brackish’ and ‘Spit’, if you haven’t managed to catch them since they returned from their decade-long hiatus, now’s your chance.

Rock Sound spoke to the band’s Morgan Lander shortly after they made their return, where she told us all about the position in which this current era finds them:

“We’ve had a lot of ups and downs in our career over the years, a lot of heartbreak, a lot of bullshit, and we all felt like if we were going to do it again, we wanted to do it for the right reasons. We wanted to be in a position to only do great stuff that we want to do, to have fun with it, and if it’s not fun, we don’t want to be involved. It’s a really nice place to be in to have the opportunity and the privilege to pick and choose. It’s something we have never experienced before and I’m grateful for it. There’s a lot of different stuff on this album. It’s quite varied. There’s a lot of abrasive stuff, a lot of melody. The ultimate goal was to bring the Kitty sound to the modern era, and working with Nick [Raskulinecz, producer] was the right move. The production value really helps to elevate it.”

Read the full interview here.

Poison The Well

Taking the award for the biggest comeback at this year’s festival is Florida’s Poison The Well. Returning with their first full-length in seventeen years ‘Peace In Place’ earlier this year, the metalcore heroes are preparing to showcase where they’re at right now as they take to the stage in Vegas. With a whole load of razor-sharp anthems up their sleeve and a newfound clarity surrounding their project, you’re not going to want to miss this.

Speaking to Rock Sound as part of our Album Story series, the band’s Jeff Moreira told us:

“It makes me proud to know that we’ve accomplished the ability to write the kind of songs that don’t die within their time… People still care about this this much. And not only that, but there are a lot of new people here. And it reinforced that, for us to pick this up where we left off, we needed to make sure we didn’t lose the foundation of what Poison The Well. Making sure we were fully genuine with what we’re attempting to do.”

Read the full Album Story feature on ‘Peace In Place’ here.

Sleep Theory

If there’s one band that should be heading into this weekend with their heads held high, it’s Sleep Theory.

After an unstoppable year following the release of debut album ‘Afterglow’, they’ve become one of the most talked about newcomers on the heavy music scene, and for very good reason. Specialising in slick metal songs infused with elements of pop and hip-hop, they’re paving the way for a whole new generation. This may well be your last chance to catch them before they take over the world.

SPEED

The Aussie hardcore outfit credited with making flute solos cool, you can expect a triumphant response when frontman Jem Siow and co. take to the stage this weekend. A formidable force in hardcore, the Sydney superstars are fresh from a huge run of shows across North America with Turnstile, and it’s fair to assume that they’ll be ready to party. Armed with plenty of gnarly, high energy tunes and the kind of stage presence that just dares you to have as much fun as possible, this is going to be one of the liveliest sets of the day.

Rock Sound spoke to frontman Jem Siow around the release of the band’s debut album ‘ONLY ONE MODE’.

Reflecting on their rapid growth, he told us:

“We started this band with such pure and humble intentions, born out of the potential that we thought we had. We started with the ambition to just be a hardcore band in Sydney and to be able to put on hardcore shows. Mix that in with the time in our lives that we started things, me being 27, in a position where we have learned from a lot of mistakes and learned a lot about ourselves, and you see that we started from a place of just wanting to champion true authenticity. Hardcore wasn’t considered cool around our friends or people in Australia when we began. But we saw it as the coolest thing ever and wanted to champion it. It made it easier for us to accept things because we were already on the back foot because it meant that we could just double down. We could do everything we thought it should be done and be exactly the version of ourselves we wanted to be.”

Read our full interview with Jem here.

Underøath

Few bands have stood the test of time whilst remaining authentically themselves quite like Underøath. Since emerging on the Florida metalcore scene back in the late nineties, the five-piece have consistently evolved and reinvented themselves, with each of their ten studio albums taking a distinctly different route to the last.

With their latest sonic adventure resulting in the bold, shapeshifting power of 2025’s ‘The Place After This One’, we spoke with Spencer Chamberlain and Aaron Gillespie about its creation as part of our Album Story series.

On where Underøath find themselves currently, Aaron told us:

“We’ve been a band a long time. We’ve made a lot of stuff, we’ve made a lot of mistakes, we’ve had a lot of successes, and it’s all from asking, ‘What’s next’? And are we okay hanging on for that ride? For a long time, it was asking, ‘Why aren’t we like this? Why aren’t we this band? Why not us?’ For the first time in our career, I don’t give a shit about any of that. When we get on stage, I know what we do and what it will feel like. It’s always going to be special because it’s us.”

Read the full Album Story feature on ‘The Place After This One’ here.

Wage War

Having dropped their latest EP ‘IT CALLS ME BY NAME’ less than a week ago, Wage War are preparing to unleash some of their darkest and most bludgeoning creations yet on the Sick New World crowd. The follow-up to 2024 full-length ‘STIGMA’, the jaw-droppingly heavy EP puts a fresh spin on the band’s signature sound, and it’s one that will feel absolutely monumental during their live show. Pair that with the pulsing beats of 2021’s ‘Manic’ and the soaring choruses of 2019 single ‘Low’, and you’re in for a very, very nice time.

Sick New World 2026 will take place at Las Vegas Festival Grounds this Saturday (April 25).

Check out the full line-up below: