Taylor met new friends.
I started working for Source Media Properties in August 2025.
Two months later my colleague Adam Fox, our resident metalhead, told me our company covers Sonic Temple, and if I was interested, I should take one of the tickets.
At first, I wasn’t the least bit interested because I am not a metalhead, I’ve never even been to a music festival and I don’t really want to do one alone knowing nothing about it.
Then Sonic Temple released the lineup and lo and behold, My Chemical Romance is the Thursday headliner.
We talked about it in the office and I told Fox I loved MCR. He said, “then you should definitely cover it. We get a list of the PR reps, you could interview them.”
Full stop. My jaw nearly dropped through the floor.
So, I agreed to cover Sonic Temple because I figured if nothing else, I get to see one of my favorite bands (for the second time, Gerard Way if you’re reading this I love you and the show was awesome).
Although I did not get to interview them, or any other band, I’m still glad I went.
I am writing this column completely exhausted, and trying to decide if I’ve fully washed the stench of sweat, cigarettes and super over-priced beer out of my body.
But more than anything, I feel very fortunate that I work for a company that does cool things like getting its reporters VIP tickets to Ohio’s biggest music festival.
Now that I spent three long days at my first musical festival, I can say that the music wasn’t what stuck with me the most — it’s the people.
Thursday I started my coverage on site, but not inside the festival yet. Talking to the campers.
They were the perfect metalheads to meet first because everyone I talked to invited me to sit on a fold-up chair, have a beer or water and get to know them.
Everyone I talked to invited me to come back any time for any reason.
One group of men, who wore some phallic-themed shirts and accessories, told me they brought 30 steaks for the weekend and invited me back for dinner.
Another group told me I would make friends in no time in the festival, but to give them a call if I needed to be around good people.
Inside the festival, I watched strangers, most of them dressed in black, connect over music, outfits, dancing and art.
Anywhere else in the world, the scary looking people dressed in demonic makeup wouldn’t come off as approachable, but at Sonic Temple they fit right in with the friendly freaks.
I even met a Delaware resident, Calin Kelly, because she standing near me and my posse during Sublime’s set.
She gave me face glitter, a tiny plastic whale and told me if I ever needed info about Delaware, to just give her a call.
I knew that music festivals were about people coming together, I just had no idea how friendly a bunch of misfits and average Joes alike could be.
And the music was so new to me.
There were only a handful of bands I knew, and even smaller portion of bands I actually listened to, those being MCR, Sublime, Pierce the Veil, Stone Temple Pilots and Shinedown.
They were all fantastic live.
I’ll admit that after hearing heavy metal live, I am not yet a convert, but I can see why there is a subculture for the genre.
Will I go back next year? Ask me after a few days of rest and I might have an answer.
Jack moshed.
I had absolutely no idea how to tackle Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival 2026, and that made me nervous.
I wasn’t sure what other stories I was going to write for a while, what the crowds were going to be like and if I was a big enough fan to enjoy this kind of music on a larger scale.
But from the moment I got there, about an hour after the gates opened on Thursday, to the last moment I left around 10 p.m. on Sunday — I was enthralled.
The weekend felt like a hazy blur at times, confused as to how I was still standing, into raw emotion full of perspective and a sense of belonging, but, of course, eventually back to rage.
It was a rollercoaster, to say the least, for my first music festival, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I mean, honestly, things can’t be bad if you get to go to one place and see 10+ bands you grew up listening to with your dad in the car.
I went on this crazy adventure with two of my best friends from Cleveland, each one of us excited to listen to childhood classics but also hear some new bands.
Staind, by far, was my favorite band to see. They’ve been a favorite of mine for a long time now, and finally getting the opportunity to see Aaron Lewis live lived up to everything I imagined and then some.
But a band that I’d never heard of that definitely made a new fan out of me was Amon Amarth. I sat down right in the pit and rowed a Viking warship with thousands of other metalheads and Nordic warriors.
This blew my mind. Amon Amarth calls it their row pits, and they do it at every show — so awesome.
But the craziest pit experiences my buddies and I got into was definitely Chevelle and Megadeth.
Circle pits to my right and left, and a swarm of crowd surfers rolling over top of us. I thought Chevelle fans were going to be the end of us on Friday.
But sure enough, I threw back my last sip of liquid courage and boxed out while sending crowd surfer after crowd surfer towards the neon security guard wall.
Megadeth was an incredible performance with an incredible Dave Mustaine guitar solo right in front of me, stage left.
But what caught me by surprise was when a shirtless, three-hat-wearing, cig-smoking dude tapped me to help get his friend up to crowd surf.
I, of course, said hell yeah and got the metalhead up with two others, no problem. But the folks in front of us weren’t catching on. I found myself running with this adrenaline junkie, seemingly alone, for a good 10, 11 steps, like a battering ram.
The crowd finally caught on, and it was smooth sailing from there. I looked back at my buddy to see him laughing so hard, and then out of nowhere came the inflatables. I’ll leave it at that.
All together this weekend was chaos. Never a dull moment no matter how hard you tried to chill out for a second. This is just a fraction of some stuff I experienced, but as I left each day, I realized some things.
I still really love Staind. I don’t like Tool as much anymore. Twenty-dollar beers suck. Columbus drives still suck.
But, metalheads really are the nicest people.
And, this younger generation can definitely handle this genre like our parents and their parents did before us.
Rock is alive and well. Thank you, Sonic Temple.
