Stone Sour & Papa Roach w/In This Moment, Sick Puppies, and All That Remains

“Never forget where you came from” — those words echo in my mind with every show I cover, every album I review, and every band I get the pleasure of meeting. I haven’t always been a Chicago native, so every once in a while, I like to head down to my hometown of Peoria and see how rock music is alive and kicking there. I told my friend on our way down to P-town that the city which rests in the heart of Illinois is a mecca for rock ‘n roll. It’s the reason I still love hard rock and metal to this day. In my teen years, it was the place to be for a real rock fanatic, as all of my favorite bands at the time would be sure to stop through — Slipknot, Coal Chamber, Sevendust, Orgy, Slayer, Ministry, System of a Down — the list is endless. So, when I saw that Stone Sour would be hitting Peoria’s Civic Center, I knew it was a show that couldn’t be missed. Stone Sour/Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has always been very vocal in his affinity for Peoria and the Midwest in general, and from seeing him in various incarnations throughout the last 15 years or so, I knew he’d do something special for us, and indeed he did. First, though, we had to witness a brutal onslaught of hard rock from a slew of diverse openers — some great and some not so much.