Culture
From MCR to Body Count: WOUB reports from Sonic Temple 2026
By: Nicholas Kobe
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Nicholas Kobe has been reporting on Danny Wimmer Presents festivals – such as Sonic Temple and Louder Than Life – for WOUB Culture since 2023. Find all his past coverage, including interviews with artists mentioned in this article, at this link.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WOUB) – This year’s Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival arrived at Historic Crew Stadium with something to prove.
The four-day fest drew a record 184,000 fans, topping last year’s 175,000, and has grown into one of the country’s premier rock festivals. However, the increasing attendance numbers only tell part of the story.
Last year’s Sonic Temple exposed some real growing pains, and a rain-soaked Welcome to Rockville the weekend before hadn’t put Danny Wimmer Presents in the most confident position heading into Columbus.
Combine this with what was, in my opinion, a lukewarm lineup, and a “win” for this year’s festival was far from guaranteed.
However, I’m happy to report that my expectations were greatly exceeded, as DWP made many course corrections to address the festival’s logistical issues while putting together a weekend of truly stellar performances and remarkable consistency.
Thursday’s pop-punk and post-hardcore lineup was the stuff of legend, with performances ramping up in scale and quality throughout the day toward My Chemical Romance’s headlining slot.
Pierce the Veil was a real standout, delivering a show that sounded better than the studio recordings without leaning on visual spectacle; just expertly performed songs that kept me on the edge of my seat for what felt like a quick hour.
Thursday’s slate on the Altar stage was a highlight for me as well, with Cattle Decapitation and Suffocation pulling crowds of mosh-ready hardcore fans you might not expect to see at a festival this “mainstream.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, My Chemical Romance was the highlight of the entire weekend.
While most of the headliners delivered on visual spectacle and energy in their own ways, MCR put the full package together better than anyone else.
Long Live the Black Parade features the band performing one of the best rock records of the last 20 years alongside a compelling twist on the album’s original story, and having seen the show before (and written about it for WOUB), what stood out most this time was Gerard Way’s acting. As the leader of the Black Parade, subjugated by the fictional nation of DRAAG, Gerard seemed nervous, uncomfortable, and genuinely unwell in all the right ways while simultaneously delivering a flawless vocal performance.
Even with little to no surprises for me personally, Long Live the Black Parade was still so genuinely exceptional that it stood as the best set of the whole weekend by a wide margin.
Friday and Saturday were the slower days for my taste.
Friday’s post-grunge and deathcore lineup was largely a slog of inoffensive performances from what I consider some of the most uninspired corners of contemporary rock, though genuine highlights cut through.
Not Enough Space was my favorite deathcore act of the weekend, their dual screamers trading lines with a kinetic energy that kept me hooked, backed by genuinely compelling musicianship free of the over-playing and momentum-halting breakdowns endemic to the genre.
On the post-grunge side, Halestorm was the clear standout. They bring the energy and the bangers of a true ’80s arena rock titan, and building a setlist around one of the most talented vocalists in rock, Lizzy Hale, is a surefire formula for success.
Sublime rounded out Friday’s highlights with a much-needed shot of energy and a welcome change of pace; ska punk works remarkably well live, and I loved seeing it get even the tiniest bit of love here.
Friday’s headliner, Shinedown, was one of my biggest pain points with the 2026 lineup when it was first announced. Since then, it has become abundantly clear that people do, in fact, love Shinedown.
As a performance, I was impressed with the energy Shinedown brought, bouncing all around the stage in a way that felt inviting, exciting, and fun regardless of your familiarity with the band.
However, no matter how well Shinedown sold these songs, it’s still the kind of music I only know because I’ll hear it on the radio before changing the channel indifferently. If you’re a Shinedown fan, I think you’d have a hard time finding any complaints about their performance at Sonic Temple. As someone not in that camp, I was impressed but not swayed.
Saturday’s focus on metalcore was also a drag for me, though I’ll acknowledge that was largely informed by my experience covering these festivals and seeing bands like Motionless in White and Black Veil Brides become somewhat “old hat”.
However, the few thrash metal acts present really brought up the group average, delivering some of the best performances of the weekend. Biohazard, Kreator, and Body Count all stood out, but Body Count’s set was truly exceptional.
(Kobe interviewed Ernie C of Body Count ahead of Sonic Temple 2026, read their conversation here)
Ice-T looks and sounds fantastic at 68, delivering all the gruff intensity and pointed political commentary that make Body Count such a special band. The vicious instrumentation and palpable excitement from the crowd gave me the biggest adrenaline rush and the biggest headbanging neck pains of the entire weekend.
Bring Me the Horizon delivered a characteristically strong performance, weaving a narrative of demonic infestation and dystopian sci-fi through a set of pop-metal bangers. The concept, far less subtle than MCR’s, still elevated the setlist considerably, keeping intrigue high even through some of the weaker material from their newest record.
Some of my excitement for BMTH has faded since the last time I saw them, though the crowd around me was absolutely electric, and I was clearly in the minority. This performance, alongside their closing set at Louder Than Life 2025, confirms they will be a staple headliner of rock festivals for the foreseeable future. At this caliber, I won’t really mind.
Sonic Temple’s final day brought the heat to close out the weekend, literally. It was so hot I sweated through my shirt before the first set.
My gross t-shirt and shorts, however, seemed remarkably comfortable compared to the masks, robes, and scale-mail bikini of Castle Rat.
The doom metal band was one of the highlights of the entire weekend, cranking the theatrics to eleven for a tight show filled with cool visuals, a fun narrative, and some of the most kickass metal around. Opening day four of a festival, when fatigue is setting in, and the asphalt is cooking, is no easy task. Castle Rat made it look effortless.
While there was plenty of power metal and general hard rock to go around, Sunday’s slate of extreme acts was what kept me going.
In Flames and Lamb of God were great as always, while Amon Amarth truly wowed me with their fantastic crowd interaction and an untouchable setlist.
My metal heart was also warmed by seeing Megadeth receive the hero’s welcome they deserved. While Mustaine’s voice may have seen better days and the visual production was minimal, Megadeth still delivered solid performances of some of the greatest thrash metal songs ever written.
The closing headliner, Tool, was a strange full-circle moment for me, as Tool also performed at my first Sonic Temple back in 2023. While I have changed considerably in those three years, my opinion on Tool’s live performance hasn’t.
Tool is objectively an impressive band. As the poster children of prog-metal, they weaved complex songs together with psychedelic imagery and lighting to create a genuinely immersive experience.
However, Tool has never quite clicked with me personally, so the musical “journey” I was being taken on largely left me cold. Unlike in 2023, though, I can now recognize that this is a matter of personal taste rather than a performance issue, and that sentiment reflects much of how I feel about Sonic Temple 2026 as a whole.
I was harsh on the initial lineup, and after seeing some of those acts, I still stand by parts of that assessment. There weren’t any truly bad performances, though. When acts I genuinely dislike, like Godsmack, Staind, or Marilyn Manson, took the stage, I was clearly in the minority in my indifference. Everyone around me was having a great time, and that’s worth acknowledging. My dislike for certain acts isn’t something I can pretend is an objective flaw with the festival.
The Secret Walls ‘Art Battles’ were a major highlight, pitting two artists head-to-head for 90 minutes to create a massive wall piece decided by fan vote. Art was more prevalent throughout the festival as a whole, with pieces under construction all weekend and new details emerging every time I walked between stages. It transformed the artwork from something you passively observe into something worth seeking out.
Parking remained a significant problem. However, to DWP’s credit, the situation was well communicated: on-site availability was flagged early, traffic updates were frequent, and the shuttle system appeared to be a genuine attempt to address the problems from the previous year.
The one inexcusable mistake of Sonic Temple 2026 was the lack of water bottle refill stations. For a festival this size, having only two stations, one of which was VIP-only, is a serious oversight. With bar service tents sitting empty across the grounds, the fix seemed obvious, and the omission was genuinely baffling as the heat intensified through the weekend.
All in all, Sonic Temple 2026 rose to the occasion, kinks and all.
A lineup I wasn’t crazy about became genuinely satisfying when spread across four days of mostly hits, and the improvements to the overall festival experience made the difference in moments where the music didn’t.
There are still problems worth solving before next year, but I left happy. For a celebration of rock, metal, and art with this much range, I’d be surprised if most people didn’t.