Iron Maiden performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 12, 2024. Photos courtesy Aftershock Festival. AFTERSHOCK 2024: • Slayer reunites for explosive Thursday headlining set • Slipknot rocks like its 1999 on fest’s second day SACRAMENTO — Saturday night’s Aftershock headliners were proof that…

Clockwise from top left: Alice Merton, Jenny Hval, Jpegmafia, Jessica Pratt, Kingfish, Kim Petras, Cate Le Bon, Swans, Ty Segall and Bad Wolves. We’ve reached the halfway point of RIFF’s top 50 albums list! It only get harder from here, but we can certainly guarantee a wealth of quality…

Bad Wolves. Courtesy of Eleven Seven. For Bad Wolves founder and drummer John Boecklin, each new record presents a fresh set of challenges. While the L.A. hard rockers came up with a massive hit single, toured extensively and even appeared on late-night TV, the process didn’t become any easier…

America; animated by Childish Gambino. We made it! This is the 52nd RIFF Rewind and the last year of our musical journey through my esoteric and idiosyncratic tastes, not to mention my often sesquipedalian ramblings about that music. I don’t know how you made it this far. I stopped reading…