Culture
Louder Than Life 2024 combats weather challenges, comes out still standing, not unscathed
By: Nicholas Kobe
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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (WOUB) – Louder Than Life 2024 happened last weekend at the Highland Festival Grounds (1010 Phillips Lane), and it was meant to be a celebration of 10 years of one of the biggest festivals in rock. Unfortunately, despite the best planning of Danny Wimmer Presents, luck was not on the side of Louder Than Life.
The elephant in the room
Hurricane Helene caused immense damage to countless towns across America, and while the storm had lost a good portion of its devastating power by the time it reached Kentucky, its effects were still felt. Strong winds from the hurricane raged all day Friday, and after delaying doors opening throughout the day, it was eventually announced that the entire day had to be canceled.
Friday’s cancellation meant Louder than Life lost 34 bands from its lineup. The most notable of these losses was Slayer. The thrash metal legends’ unexpected return for three festival dates (Riot Fest, Louder Than Life, and Aftershock) was one of, if not the key draw for fans to Louder Than Life.
Slayer was on the top of banners leading into the festival. Their merch was sold in merch tents typically reserved for Louder The Life merch only, and it was worn more widely than any other band’s merch all festival. Following the cancellation of Friday’s lineup and the confirmation that Slayer would not be rescheduled, the pressing question became: “Can Louder than Life survive without a quarter of its bands, including arguably its biggest draw?”
The answer, though, was far from simple.
Day 1: The Calm Before the Storm
Thursday was the figurative (and literal) “calm before the storm,” as most of Louder than Life’s least notable performances landed on this day.
That’s not to say it was all bad, or even bad at all. Thursday was dominated by good bands giving solid performances, just not going above and beyond. Bands like The Warning, Teen Mortgage, and Dead Poets Society all gave good performances, and each of these bands have an enjoyable catalog.
However, on an objective level, I can’t say these performances far and away exceeded the performances of bands like Five Finger Death Punch and Starset. I enjoyed the latter far less, but that’s almost exclusively due to my dislike of those specific catalogs and nothing about the performances themselves.
There still, however, were a lot of highlights. Despite a very front-loaded setlist, Halestorm is an arena rock-style juggernaut that still plays during the daylight, despite having the showmanship and catalog worth of a much higher billing.
Simultaneously, Ramones icon Marky Ramone blitzed through classic Ramones songs with the swagger of someone half his age. Pop punk bands Sum 41 and The Offspring came in swinging with some of the most fun and memorable sets of the night, cranking the energy up to eleven before the headliners.
The best set of the day, however, was by a landslide, Bob Vylan. The band gave one of the weekend’s most politically pointed performances, bursting with energy and filled with genuinely funny audience banter.
Slipknot’s headlining performance was a full album set, celebrating their 1999 debut album’s 25 year anniversary. As Corey Taylor himself said on stage, this was not a set for the casual Slipknot fan, as songs from later albums such as Duality, The Devil and I and Psychosocial were all left on the cutting room floor.
While I appreciated hearing the deep cuts, and an overall different set than what I heard at Sonic Temple 2024, as someone who just recently came around on Slipknot, this set was not meant for me. Having a deep-cut filled set as a festival headliner was a risky decision, and while not one of my personal favorites, I think Slipknot executed it well.
Day 2: A great comeback, stifled before it can reach “home sweet home”
Saturday’s bands faced the biggest challenge of the weekend, having to directly make up for the disappointment of Friday’s cancellation, and set the festival back on track.
For the most part, that’s what happened. I wasn’t impressed with CKY, who attempted to breathe bombast into what I’d consider a pretty lifeless set of songs to middling results. Citizen Solider also suffered much the same issue. However, like Thursday, pop-punk really helped kick things into high gear, be it the fantastic vocals and edge of Sleeping with Sirens, the theatrics of The Funeral Portrait, or L.S Dunes bringing one of the rawest and most intimate sets of the weekend.
This momentum only builds with phenomenal performances from Til Linderman, originally a Friday performer who took the spot of Falling in Reverse, who had to cancel due to logistical issues surrounding the storm. Til’s insane visuals, stage presence, and cohesive aesthetic added to the distinct industrial sound fitting for the Rammstein frontman.
The Dropkick Murphy’s blend of Celtic instruments with punk rock is seamless, and a blast for their entirely too short set, easily my favorite act of the day. While I didn’t get to catch as much of Three 6 Mafia and Body Count as I’d like to, it didn’t take long for them to impress me. Three 6 Mafia’s on-stage charisma was bursting at the seams and spilled into an extremely hyped crowd, while Body Count’s politically charged lyrics and fantastic guitar work hit like a baseball bat.
Unfortunately, the day rather sharply dropped off for headliner Mötley Crüe. While the expectations some may have placed on the Crüe to “make up” for Slayer’s cancellation weren’t fair, Mötley Crüe didn’t measure up to nearly anyone’s standard.
To put it bluntly, Vince Neil’s vocals aren’t great anymore. The signature high notes of ‘80s rock are a pinnacle Neil can’t reach anymore, and in a catalog like Crüe’s, losing the power and range severely diminishes their performance.
Crüe has always portrayed themselves as the rule-breaking, sex god, bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll, and this doesn’t work as well when you’re over 60, and no longer at the cutting edge of either sound or debauchery. Some of it was embarrassing, and some of it was just gross, like Nikki Six begging women in the crowd to flash the band during a meatheaded interlude. That all being said, aside from the vocals, Crüe’s musicianship is still solid, and their discography has enough iconic tracks to carry an otherwise disappointing performance.
Day 3: Ending on stable ground
Sunday’s lineup started off with great showing from smaller acts. Indian band Project Mishram’s combination of progressive metal with traditional instruments was really compelling, and something I’d love to see the band fully flourish. Descartes A Kant, on the other hand, has very little room for improvement. The band’s retro-futuristic Star Trek-eque aesthetic combined with an innovative blend of electronics with metal that goes way beyond the barebones keyboards and 808s of many modern metal bands.
The band also had a cohesive theme running through their set of human psychology and coping with the troubles of the world, set up by great visual interludes, and narrated by an onstage robot. Descartes A Kant was one of the best performances of the whole festival and is a band that you’d be doing yourself a disservice to miss out on.
Spiritbox proved themselves once again as forerunners of modern metal, mixing brutally heavy breakdowns with earworm melodies in a way that their peers can’t quite reach. Coming off their performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Gojira is riding a career-high but plays with the ferocity of a band hungry to prove themselves one of the best around, despite doing that years ago.
As my personal favorite metal band ever, Judas Priest will never fail to excite me. Three years after guitar player Richie Faukner’s on-stage aortic rupture nearly took his life at Louder than Life 2021, Priest’s return to the festival was grand on all fronts, but it felt that extra bit better to watch Faukner play like the absolute beast that he is.
That being said, Sunday wasn’t all high notes, with Stained being one of my least favorite sets of the weekend. A large part of this was due to personally not being a fan of the band’s country-rock-metal hybrid, which feels like it distills all of those genres to their most boring parts. On the other hand, for a band playing later in the day, the set was pretty notability lowkey, and while it should’ve added to their down-to-earth persona, it just felt like they were missing the energy brought by the acts before them.
Royale Lynn suffered many of the same problems of blending genres to bland results, but as a smaller act, her vocal talent alone gives her potential that left me feeling more hopeful than Stained.
Sunday’s headliner, Korn, sits firmly in the middle of the pack on Sunday. The band’s performance was well done, it’s just simply not my cup of tea. Despite some energetic moments and songs, this Nu-Metal staple didn’t win me over in the way Slipknot did at Sonic Temple. That being said, Korn gave a really good performance, so for the many, many Korn fans there, I’d guarantee they left very happy.
What was, what could be, and “consistency is key”
Louder than Life 2024 set a solid bar of quality across the board. With, ironically the exception of Mötley Crüe, on a technical level, every band I saw gave a serviceable performance. Each attendee’s personal taste in what bands and styles they like going in is really going to be more reflective of who they’ll like at Louder Than Life, rather than the bands themselves. While that benchmark is good, I feel victim to that too.
Many of the bands I praised highly here like Judas Priest, Gojira, Spiritbox, and The Offspring were bands I knew I loved going into the festival. When it comes to performers who gave a whole new level to their sound live, that list is a lot slimmer, and mostly early in the day with bands like Bob Vylan, The Dropkick Murphys, and Descartes A Kant.
That being said, despite losing a quarter of the festival, Louder Than Life 2024 was a good festival, on par with Sonic Temple 2024. However, if you read my initial reaction to this lineup from earlier this year, you’ll see that in my opinion, this festival had the potential to be the best I’d ever attended. Despite how much I liked Louder than Life 2024, having uncontrollable circumstances rip that away is still a tough pill to swallow.