Last Thursday, after months of speculating and planning, we made it to the Atlanta leg of Vans Warped Tour at the Lakewood amphitheater.

As lovers and supporters of good music, we spent our time bonding with up-and-coming artists and watching more established acts perform live.

We couldn’t see everyone, but here’s a run-down of the bands we did see and what they brought to the stage.

The Heirs

This rock band from Los Angeles featured a female lead singer with a quirky sense of fashion. Their music was pretty chill and laid back, but didn’t draw quite the crowd or the engagement the other bands did.

Cane Hill

Metal band Cane Hill dominated the stage with earth-shattering drums, guitars, and unclean vocals. The lead singer exerted a powerful influence over the crowd, and knew exactly what buttons to push.

The crowd had the most aggressive mosh-pit we saw all day, in spite of all the signs Warped Tour put up warning fans not to crowdsurf or participate in mosh-pits.

Less than Jake

This ska-punk band from Florida drew a pretty big crowd. But after watching a metal-band perform a few minutes before, they just couldn’t live up to the intense energy we had witnessed on stage and in the crowd.

Yellowcard

A veteran crowd-favorite of Warped Tour, Yellowcard drew one of the biggest crowds of the event. Ironically, this is also the band’s final international tour as Yellowcard announced that they would be calling it quits after nearly two decades of making music. Talk about going out with a bang!

The band first rode to stardom with the hit “Way Away” and closed out the show with this and other hit singles from their glory days back in the earlier 2000s.

New Found Glory

Another veteran of Vans Warped Tour and the rock music industry, punk-band New Found Glory commanded a large following. Fans were thrilled not just by the band’s great music – new and old – but also the lead singer’s decision to come down from the stage and bond with his fans. Good times.

Falling in Reverse

Best known as the former front-man of Escape the Fate, Ronnie Radke re-rose to stardom via his new band, Falling in Reverse. The singer lost his place in Escape the Fate following legal and drug problems, which kept him in prison for two and a half years.

Radke has since regrown his cult following of loyal fans and has a stage presence unlike any other musician we’ve seen live.

Sum 41

Canadian band Sum 41 has dominated the punk-rock scene for decades in America, and around the world. Best known for millennial oldies like “Fat Lip” and “The Hell Song”, the band had the best setup on stage, and invited a few fans up to watch the show.

But perhaps what was most amazing to all of us is the fact that Deryck Whibley hasn’t aged a day.

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There were many other bands on tour we wanted to see, like Good Charlotte and Sleeping with Sirens. But the rain killed the Sleeping with Sirens show around 8:30 PM, and for some reason, Good Charlotte didn’t play the Atlanta leg.

Other notable bands we overheard while moving between stages or foraging for food and water in the boiling heat included Tonight Alive, Issues, Assuming we Survive, Sykes, Bad Seed Rising, Cold Rain, I See Stars, and Emarosa.

All images in this article are the property of Alexis Chateau and used with her permission.