Here are 10 must-see artists coming to 2024's Welcome to Rockville fest in Daytona Beach

Editor's note: Once again News-Journal sports editor and heavy metal aficionado Ryan Pritt shares his thoughts about this year's Welcome to Rockville festival. He was so popular last year, we decided to bring him back. Enjoy.

We're going to take it for granted that for the most part, if you're coming to Welcome to Rockville , you've probably heard of and even listened to Motley Crue, Limp Bizkit, Foo Fighters and maybe even Slipknot.

But of the more than 100 acts coming to the hard rock festival at Daytona International Speedway May 8-12, there will be plenty you don't know about. Part of the allure of music festivals is discovering new favorite bands. With so many filling out the five-stage, four-plus day affair, where should you start?

Don't fret - we've come up with a little guide, listing 10 must-see acts not headlining the main stages. (Note: Some videos may contain offensive language and/or visuals.)

Magnolia Park

• Day: Sunday
• Time: 4:50 p.m.
• Stage: Vortex
• Latest release: “Hellstar” (single, 2024)

This is one of two bands hailing from Orlando on this list, and they couldn’t be further apart musically.

While the soon-to-be-visited Slaughter to Prevail will be a destroyer of worlds, Magnolia Park can croon about falling in love on Halloween and is equally comfortable dabbling in hardcore and rap.

It’s when it decides to mix the two, like in the song “Animal”, a track featuring Ethan Ross and PLVTINUM from 2023, that it sets itself apart. Magnolia Park feels like a natural "nu metal" evolution.

Regardless of its place within genre constraints and alongside its influences and peers, armed with a fistful of festival-ready tracks, Magnolia Park’s set should be great fun if nothing else.

Thrown

• Day: Thursday
• Time: 1:30 p.m.
• Stage: Vortex
• Latest release: "Nights" (EP, 2024)

This band is for those looking to start the week with a bang.

Part of it is the timeslot and the doubleheader to open play on the Vortex Stage. But while Fuming Mouth will start the proceedings at 12:30 by grinding festival-goers into the ground, Thrown will pull ‘em back up and get ‘em bouncing.

Sonically, Thrown isn’t necessarily breaking new ground, not that it has to. It comes equipped with plenty of metalcore/hardcore/nu metal chops with Humanity’s Last Breath/Vildhjarta drummer Buster Odeholm anchoring the ship.

But if you’re walking in on Thursday afternoon and Thrown is on stage, it will offer the first true hint at what to expect over the course of the next four days. And its new EP entitled "Nights" should make for a great festival offering.

Oh yeah, and it's really good.

Dead Poet Society

• Day: Sunday
• Time: 3:05 p.m.
• Stage: Inferno
• Latest release: “Fission” (2024)

Next up is a chance to do a little dancin’ and even get up in your feelings before a final, frantic sprint to the finish line Sunday night.

Somewhere between indie, alternative, pop and progressive metal lies Dead Poet Society , a Boston-born group that owes as much to Muse, Birds of Tokyo, Jet and the White Stripes as it does the bands it’ll share a bill with at Rockville.

Soaring high clean vocals from singer Jack Underkoffer stand out with brooding bass tones clashing against texture-driven guitars in verses, yielding to unified, driving choruses and bridges.

It's a whole vibe and one that slightly more mellow fans will certainly appreciate.

Return to Dust

• Day: Sunday
• Time: 12:55 p.m.
• Stage: Inferno
• Latest release: “Strangers” (single, 2024)

Let’s party like it’s 1994!

No, Return to Dust hasn’t been around nearly that long, releasing their debut, “The Black Road (EP)” just last year but you’ll swear you've heard them long before that.

While the week will feature plenty of punk, hardcore and nu metal acts, here’s your chance to get grungy.

The Los Angeles trio drips with nostalgia, and pick it apart with the Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam and even Days of the New comparisons if you must. But everything is derived from something, and there’s enough freshness and talent here to keep interest at a time when most everyone else has abandoned such stylings.

Return to Dust’s set will be largely of its own and a welcomed sound for those of a certain age and temperament.

However, we strongly advise against flannel in Florida this time of year.

Slaughter to Prevail

• Day: Friday
• Time: 6:45 p.m.
• Stage: Inferno
• Latest release: “Conflict” (single, 2024)

If for no other reason, see them just for the sheer spectacle of it.

This is the heaviest act at Welcome to Rockville this year and if you disagree, you can take it up with frontman Alex Terrible , if you dare. The walking embodiment of everything your parents feared about rock and roll, Terrible and his bandmates look equal parts extreme metal band and masked villains of the next major Hollywood slasher release.

Look, it’s not for everyone, brutal barely begins to scratch the surface on the deathcore outfit from Orlando by way of Yekaterinburg, Russia.

But look at it like cage diving with great white sharks in South Africa or eating snails in Paris: Sure, it's scary, but while you’re there, you might as well get the full experience.

Kim Dracula

• Day: Friday
• Time: 2:55 p.m.
• Stage: Octane Drift
• Latest release: “A Gradual Decline in Morale” (2023)

Heavy metal for the TikTok generation or the soundtrack to a schizophrenic's stream of consciousness?

Is there a difference? Doesn’t matter either way, you won’t see or hear anything like this the rest of the week, year or maybe your life.

Fronted by Tasmanian Samuel Wellings, the outfit is named for a Deftones song but that’s about where those similarities end. A mix of samples from pop and metal songs are interwoven with crushing breakdowns, pop sections, rap stanzas, funk bass, kitchen sinks and who knows what else.

Ideas and movements dart in and vanish like flashes of lightning, leaving one winded and wondering, “What the hell was that?” Well, there’s no answer to that question here and some things are better left unexplained.

Just take this one in and go with it. Who knows where you might end up?

Electric Callboy

• Day: Friday
• Time: 7:30 p.m.
• Stage: Vortex
• Latest release: Tekkno (2023)

It’s like playing Barbie dolls with Wednesday Addams.

Or something like that.

As refreshingly and humorously self-aware as they are glaringly unique, the German ravers have been pushing an eclectic mix of electronica and metalcore for years but hit new career watermarks with their 2023 release, “Tekkno” and in particular, singles “Pump It” and “We Got the Moves.” And 14 years after their debut release, the band is still climbing, attracting collabs from Conquer Divide and Finch on their latest record.

Like Kim Dracula, we can guarantee you won’t see or hear anything quite like Electric Callboy, the artist formally known as Eskimo Callboy.

Expect a crowd full of fans holding up the horns with one hand and twirling glowsticks with the other. Who would want to miss that?

Drain

• Day: Saturday
• Time: 6:45 p.m.
• Stage: Garage
• Latest release: “Living Proof” (2023)

Things like genre versatility and production are cute and all, but for those looking for some stank-face riffage delivered with a snarled-lip mentality, this one’s for you.

Some hardcore with a dash of punk and thrash, that’s about all you get here all while packing 2 to 4-minute songs with more grooving guitar work than you can shake a Les Paul at. And while the pace changes up often, with the bottom falling out from under feverish tempos leaving the listener to plunge into the sludgy depths, the attitude rarely if ever does.

It's hard to ignore the Pantera influence, both in the delivery and attitude of vocalist Sammy Ciaramitaro and the wailing solos and palm-muted barre chord barrages from guitarist Cody Chavez. But when has that style ever not slayed live?

This is a band with a catalog built for a festival and if you’re walking by while DRAIN is playing, we bet you’ll stop, listen and most of all, move.

Polyphia

• Day: Sunday
• Time: 8:15 p.m.
• Stage: Garage
• Latest release: “Remember That You Will Die” (2022)

It’s hard to believe that many Rockville goers will enter the gates without having at least checked these guys out on YouTube. The streaming service likely has as much to do with this band’s rise as anything.

No, Polyphia isn’t a radio band , it doesn’t even have a full-time vocalist. But watching these guys play is where the payoff lies.

The term, “virtuoso” gets thrown around liberally but it may apply here with guitarists Tim Henson and Scott LePage, bassist Clay Gober and drummer Clay Aeschliman trading the spotlight in acrobatic bursts of mind-melting musicianship.

But while the Tosin Abasi-fronted outfit Animals as Leaders, a similarly proficient instrumental ensemble, displays similar skill confined largely in the parameters of metal, Polyphia blur the lines between genres with influences also including funk, electronica and trap.

Polyphia will finish things off on the Garage Stage on Sunday night and are up against heavyweights Breaking Benjamin and leading right into the beginning of Evanescence’s set. But for those with a soft spot for technicality looking for a slow comedown from four-plus days of rocking, this is the stage to end the week in front of.

Imminence

• Day: Friday
• Time: 4:45 p.m.
• Stage: Vortex
• Latest release: “The Black” (2024)

Imminence’s commitment to the grandiose is nothing new.

The band has set itself apart thanks in large part to violinist/vocalist Eddie Berg, who provides ambiance on strings and a mix of ethereal and crushing vocals, creating a sound that's somehow distinguished, emotional and brutal all at once - like a glass of champagne with nails at the bottom.

And after 15 years together, the 2024 release of "The Black," the band's latest full-length album, is among the best of the year. The single of the same name, released weeks before the record, is especially striking and looms as one of the more hauntingly gorgeous soundscapes painted in the genre in recent memory.

While the orchestral ingredients are still there in spades, Imminence continues to hone in on its arrangements with the symphonic elements serving the song structures of the two new singles. It never feels like filler or being different for the sake of being different. There's a plan here and it's executed at a high level.

Its latest effort is as accessible as accessible as anything Imminence has done to date, but make no mistake, there’s no bending of the knee to the mainstream here.

You’ll meet it on its terms and be glad you did.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Here are 10 must-see artists coming to 2024's Welcome to Rockville fest in Daytona Beach