Another epic Aftershock is in the books, and luckily we got a chance to camp backstage to help celebrate the best four days for Rock fans in Sacramento as Audacy hosts Dallas , Abe Kanan , and Myki Angeline kicked back with some of the festival's biggest performers.
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Starting off with one of this year's main headliners, Sacramento's 98 Rock host Abe Kanan got into some of Evanescence 's near-future plans with frontwoman Amy Lee , who revealed the band is currently working on brand new music. "It's almost done," she says with a smirk, refusing to offer any further details.
LISTEN NOW: Amy Lee of Evanescence says new music on the way
"It sounds killer, you're gonna love it," Amy adds. "We're just working on a new song -- right now -- and then we have more recording stuff happening down the road... We've got a nice little pile going," she says of what's in the works. "We're excited, really excited. It's time for new music. We released our last album, ‘The Bitter Truth’ sort of intermittently through 2020, [it] officially came out in 2021, so this has been long enough for years.”
Speaking of waiting games -- Sacramento's ALT 94.7 host Dallas spoke with Aftershock Day One headliner Jordan Benjamin ( grandson ) about how he managed to keep this year's big Linkin Park reunion a secret, as well as the experience of opening their very first shows back. “It was wild… I found out about that whole opportunity about a month before the show,” he explains. “I too was kind of in the dark about the whole thing -- I had a brief conversation with the band, and with Mike [Shinoda] who's been a longtime mentor and friend of mine. It was really cool to do because first off... hopefully, if we're lucky, they'll play lots and lots more shows now that they're back in business. But to be there for those first days definitely had a back-to-school feeling for it and I had to keep it a secret for an agonizing three weeks. I had seen Mike multiple times to work on my record or just catch up, and even then he would kind of be a little dodgy on what he was working on… But I had no idea."
LISTEN NOW: Grandson on opening for newly reunited Linkin Park
Disturbed drummer Mike Wengren touched on the band's The Sickness 25th anniversary tour that was revealed last week, explaining, “We're gonna do basically like an Act One and an Act Two,” during their outing. “The first act will be ‘The Sickness’ front-to-back, the second act will be the greatest hits,” he says, without giving all of the secrets away. “We're gonna have all kinds of new toys and it's gonna be probably one of the biggest things we've ever done in our career.”
LISTEN NOW: Disturbed's Mike Wengren
South African rockers Seether are no strangers to the festival circuit and bassist Dale Stewart tells Abe Kanan Aftershock is without a doubt at the top of the heap. “It's definitely one of our favorites. You know, we don't get to play on the West Coast as much as we'd like. So, yeah man, this is definitely a highlight for us. We've always had a really good response and you know, people are having a good time.” As a headliner on a massive show like this, he says he feels less weight on his shoulders than usual because of all of the other “monstrous bands” who do most of the heavy lifting in terms of ticket sales. “But I'd like to think we're worth a decent amount of tickets,” he laughs. “I feel like at a festival, it's kind of a collective thing… it really takes the pressure off of you."
LISTEN NOW: Dale Stewart of Seether backstage at Aftershock
When P.O.D. walks into the building everything just seems to get better, and 98 Rock’s Myki Angeline found this out firsthand speaking with Sonny Sandoval and Traa Daniels backstage at Aftershock. Veritas , the band's eleventh studio album, was released earlier this year and the response has been "amazing," says Sonny. Although in a festival setting the band feels somewhat pressed for time with so much music up their sleeves. He says it can be hard to narrow everything down to 30 minutes – but “as long as the crowd is having a good time, that's all that matters. You push through that.” Releasing new music these days he adds is like “a whole new world,” from what they remember after 33 years in the game. “We were playing shows everywhere and selling cassette tapes and then CDs -- and we were moving music back then – but it was a different type of fan. Now, we're all spoiled with social media and the timeframe in our minds is so short.”
LISTEN NOW: P.O.D.'s Sonny Sandoval and Traa Daniels
Listen to the clips above and don't miss our continuing coverage from Aftershock 2024, featuring discussions with Hawthorne Heights , Shadows Fall , Disturbed , Halestorm , From Ashes To New , Alien Ant Farm , Drowning Pool , P.O.D. , Nothing More , Breaking Benjamin , and tons of others.
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