This is part two of a multi-part series in which I discuss the sights, sounds, and smells I experienced while attending the 2025 edition of Louder Than Life (“America’s Loudest Rock & Metal Festival”) in beautiful Louisville, Kentucky. For part one, click here. If you’re interested in other nonsense I’ve written about past Louder Than Lifeseses, click here.

As mentioned previously, Day Two was the least interesting day for me, and it was the same for Sheila. I wanted to see XCOMM, but their set started at 11:45, and there was a zero percent chance in hell that I was gonna be able to get there that early after the workout that was Day One. This band has been around for a little over two years, and I dunno how old these dudes are, but they are obviously young, and they kick a ton of ass. Just now, when I tried to find their ages, I learned that Scott Ian’s son Revel is the drummer, and now you know that, too.

I had some interest in seeing Nonpoint on Main Stage 1. I don’t actually remember Nonpoint from back in the day, but when Sheila and I did our pre-festival homework, I enjoyed them enough that I figured I’d probably also enjoy it live if I happened to be close enough to experience it. My main interest in their set was that my buddy Mitch really wanted to see them, and one of the things I enjoy most about live music is seeing other people losing themselves in the experience, especially people I know and care about. Anyway, we didn’t get there early enough for their 12:45 start time, but Mitch assured me they sounded great.

Sheila and I had a bit of interest in watching Gloryhammer on the Reverb Stage, just for the silliness of it, but as I mentioned above, Day One was so fucking exhausting. The blazing sun and 90° F temperatures didn’t help, but the worst part easily is the sprawling nature of the new location. We had to really ease into Day Two. It was gonna be another hot one out there, and general Admission and Single-Day VIP passes had sold out several days before the fest began, largely due to Sleep Token‘s spot as headliner. No disrespect intended to official headliner Avenged Sevenfold (or my homeboy Dustin), but in terms of drawing a crowd, Sleep Token was definitely the headliner that day.¹

We were both very interested in seeing Walls of Jericho on the Loudmouth Stage, but due to our slowness, and the increased traffic on the ride in, we only got to catch their last two songs. They were great, and I’d love to see them again, but, like, for real next time. We popped into Top Shelf afterward for some snacks and drinks, then fought our way through the crowd over to VIP, where we hung out in the shade with Mitch and Amanda and watched Static X. I don’t think I ever listened to Static X on purpose before this year’s lineup was announced. While doin our pre-fest homework, I learned that I knew their song “Push It”, and I figured I could do worse than hearing that live, if I happened to be in the vicinity. Their stage show was hella fun, and they sounded good, and they played “Push It”, and they played another song I kinda knew, so I was happy enough.

We went back to Top Shelf after Static X and stayed there for the next few hours. One of the two reasons I even bothered to leave the hotel that day was Insane Clown Posse, and they were playing Main Stage 1 at 4:10 PM. My homeboy Jim was pretty into them for a few years in our late teens, but that was when I was getting super into hardcore, post-hardcore, and emo, and I never really gave them a fair shake. I knew a few songs prior to the lineup release (all thanks to Jim), and I’ve always been fascinated by their weird lore, and by the Juggalo community, but most of my juggaknowledge was gleaned from the commercials for the Gathering of the Juggalos, the “Straight Up Juggahos” episode of Workaholics, and of course the Saturday Night Live parody of their song “Miracles”.

Anyway, ICP’s set was fuckin lit, as the kids may or may not say.² It was forty minutes of non-stop mayhem, silliness, and Faygo Breaks.

I was interesting in checking out Suicide Silence on the Loudmouth Stage at 5:00 PM, and as it was the closest stage to the Top Shelf exit, it would’ve been doable, but unfortunately the Loudmouth Stage was also the closet stage to the shuttle entrance, and the foot traffic was only increasing, plus like I said already, it was hot and the place was too big and I’m old and I’m out of shape even though I walk like 8-10 miles a day at work and I eat lots of vegetables and whole grains and protein.³

Dayseeker played on Main Stage 2 next, and I found them fairly boring, but I did see a shirt that said something like “I cried at a Dayseeker show and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” on the back of it, and I thought that was pretty funny. Mudvayne came along next on Main Stage 1, and while I appreciate what they do, they are not for me. Some other time I’ll tell the story of when I happened to see Mudvayne live before they were known outside the general vicinity of Peoria, Illinois.

Mudvayne played from 5:50-6:35. Somewhere between 5:30 and 6:00, I walked to the top level of the elevated viewing area in Top Shelf to take some pictures. Here they are now.⁴

The Elevated Viewing Area used to be much closer to Main Stage 2. The General Admission area in front of the main stages in the new location isn’t nearly as deep as the old spot, so they made it wider.⁵ One of many cons for the new location.

The VIP section used to be closer to Main Stage 1, also. DWP got the gold mine, VIP and Top Shelf got the shaft.

In previous years, the entrance to the VIP area has been right next to the exit from the VIP area, but this year, because of the aforementioned lack of depth of the new location, the VIP entrance is way back behind the EVA, which, due to bottlenecking with the entrance/exit to Kentucky Kingdom, added at least 10 minutes to the walk from Top Shelf as compared to Day One

Note the yellow “circle” on the right side of the picture. I used technology to indicate where the Brand-New-This-Year General Admission Shaded Viewing Area (GASVA) begins, and also where the GA main stage area food vendors start. Both of those things will come into play shortly.

Trees were definitely a pro of the new location, even if every bit of shade was taken up at all times by people looking at their phones. Still, they were nice to look at, and they helped us breathe.

The people in the vicinity of the Loudmouth Stage (in the center of the above picture) are about to be watching/listening to Whitechapel, and after missing them at the last two LTL’s, I planned on being among those people. The plan was to head over that way and get some food before meeting Mitch and Amanda there.

I took the above photo at 5:48 PM, and we left Top Shelf no later than 6:00, which is when Whitechapel was scheduled to start. It took us less than 5 minutes to walk to Top Shelf from the Loudmouth Stage after Walls of Jericho finished their set at 2:25, so we thought that’d be plenty of time to hear/see the bulk of Whitechapel’s set. The joke was on us; it took us almost 10 minutes to walk over there, only to find that there were absolutely no food vendors in that area. I texted Mitch that we were gonna find food, then we’d meet them there. Due primarily to the people sitting on/in every possible surface in that GASVA, the lines at the food vendors had to split into like four or five lines per vendor, regardless of how many lines any given vendor was set up to handle at one time.

We finally managed to get in near the end of one of the lines for what we hoped would be big honkin slices of pizza, and eventually we scored our dinner (three big honkin slices of cheese pizza), then we proceeded to fight our way back through the vicinity of the GASVA, and longer story short, by the time we got back to the Loudmouth Stage, Whitechapel was finished, and now I’ve missed them three years in a row.

I was unhappy about that, but at least the pizza was good (and a relatively good value, as far as festival food goes), and anyway the next band on the Loudmouth Stage was the other (and primary) reason I bothered to leave the hotel that afternoon: straight outta Bridgeport (CT), metallic hardcore heroes Hatebreed.

The first time I heard Hatebreed was also the first time I visited the late, lamented Black Flag Music and Skate in Bedford, Indiana. The store owner/future homie Pat played their debut album, Satisfaction is the Death of Desire (1997) for me after finding out I was into Sick of it All, Suicidal Tendencies, and Pantera, and I purchased it immediately. I listened to it all the time for the next couple-few years, then I started smokin dope and got super into the Beatles for a while, and I never got around to listening to much after that first album. I liked everything I heard from them, I just didn’t think about listening to them so much anymore.

I was supposed to see them live in 2001, but it didn’t happen. I’ll tell that story another time, but as for this story, at 7:20 PM on Friday, September 19, my wildest seeing-Hatebreed-live-related dreams finally came true.

Every band on Earth is lucky that they didn’t have to follow Hatebreed on that stage. For forty minutes, Hatebreed was the only thing that was real, and somewhere in time, twenty-one year-old Joel was smiling, and wondering why. He might’ve even started stomp-moshing all by himself like Scott Ian, which he always preferred to actual mosh pits.⁷

Forty-eight year-old Joel was also smiling, and he definitely knew why, but he was stomp moshing more like Messiah Marcolin, because it’s a little easier on the joints.

Forty minutes until Sleep Token took to Main Stage 2, and people were still steadily coming in from the main gates. None of us cared enough about Sleep Token to deal with all that bullmess, so the four of us took that opportunity to call it a night. I would’ve liked to have stayed for Avenged Sevenfold, if only to show Dustin that I don’t hate them, but based on what I’ve heard and read about the People Who Were There for Sleep Token, my night would’ve only gotten worse before A7X started playing, and besides, I had to save my strength for Deftones’ headlining set on Day Three, which was scheduled to end at 11:30 PM, aka two hours past my Bedtime.

Day Three also featured both Sheila’s #1 Must-See Band of the Festival and my #1 Must-See Band of the Festival, plus a bunch of other cool shit happened, and also a bunch more walking. I’ll be writing about all that and more soon. Like, soon soon. I’m holding myself to it.

As always, thanks for reading. Subscribe for updates, if you wanna. If you have any cool friends, maybe you could tell them about Clockwise Circle Pit. Later skaters. 🤘

1. Of the whole festival, really. ↩︎
2. Probably not. ↩︎
3. Fuckin genetics, how do they work? ↩︎
4. Entertain them. ↩︎
5. If you catch my drift. ↩︎
6. No bullshit, we saw a group who brought a fucking tablecloth to the VIP section. The balls on some of these people. ↩︎
7. I’ve had some fun in some pits, but I’ve always been a little soft, and now I’m too old for that shit. ↩︎