Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier looked out at the tens of thousands of heavy metal fans stretched out before him at Discovery Park in Sacramento and clearly liked what he saw.

“It’s good to be back to our favorite (expletive) festival in the United States — Aftershock,” the vocalist-guitarist said.

Basically, he summed up what everyone in the house — or, umm, field — was thinking: It was indeed so incredibly great to be back and rocking to four days of heavy music at the mighty Aftershock Festival.

The 2025 affair, which kicked off on Thursday and continued through Sunday, was once again loaded with top attractions — from pop-punk icons Blink-182 and U.K. metalcore champs Bring Me the Horizon to shock-rocker Rob Zombie and Sacramento alt-rock heroes Deftones — as well as a slew of rising

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