Every summer, all styles of rock bands tour the country as part of Warped Tour. These bands range from pop-rock to metal, and everything in between. There are a lot of big-name bands who go, but also about three smaller bands for every popular band going. Needless to say, it’s a great place to not only listen to music you know and love, and it’s also great for finding new bands that you like. Naturally, I didn't get to see every band, but here are a few of the best shows I saw at Warped Tour this year.

The Maine

I actually hadn’t really heard about this band until the morning of the concert. One of my friends was watching their show as I arrived, and I met up with him at that show. It had been cloudy all morning, and suddenly the sun came out, so the singer started singing to the sun during one of their songs. After the show I actually met them, and in the short time I was with them, they seemed like nice people.

Tonight Alive

I’ve liked this band for as long as I’ve known them, which is probably about two years now. In their show, they successfully played most of my favorite songs (it would be impossible to play all of my favorite songs because they’re a good enough band that I like all their songs and they only have half an hour to play). As a live band, they were easily as good as they are in their studio recorded albums, and they interacted well with the audience.

Pvris

When I first heard of this band about a year and a half ago, I have to admit that I didn’t really like them. Then they played last year at Warped Tour and my sister wanted to see their show, so I went with her. During the show, I was so impressed with their music that I got more and more into their music as the year went by.

This year, they came back and I went to their show because as much as I liked them last year, I knew I’d like them more this time because I was actually familiar with their music. While I feel like last year’s show was better, this year’s was also amazing. Of course, there were tall people standing in front of me the whole time so I couldn’t see anything, but the point of a rock concert is to hear anyway. As with last year, I thoroughly enjoyed this show.

Sleeping With Sirens

This is another band I’ve known for years, but I didn’t really get into them until their most recent album, “Madness,” came out last year. That album had enough good music to make the band for me. During their show, they played all of my favorite songs off that album, as well as the couple that I liked by them before that album came out. They had a great stage presence as well, creating easily one of the best shows at Warped Tour this year.

Sum 41

Sum 41 is probably the most famous band at Warped Tour this year. They let a few audience members watch the show from the stage, and after their opening number, encouraged the audience to give the “41 Salute,” with consisted of holding up the middle finger of your left hand, and four fingers up on your right hand (so someone looking at you would see the number 41). The audience took up the entire space behind the Journey’s Left Foot and Journey’s Right Foot stages, and hearing them play made it clear why they were so popular. Towards the end of their show, they played their most popular song, “Still Waiting,” introducing it by saying it was written about George Bush, but today it applies more to Donald Trump.

Sykes

Towards the end of the day, my friends and I were hot and tired, so we rested in the grass in the shade next to where some of the smaller bands were playing. About five minutes later, the previous band finished and a new band started playing. We were all enjoying this new band, so we looked up in our schedule what they were called. And as they said at the end of the song, they were a band called Sykes, hailing from London. Their music set the perfect mood for lying in the grass and having listened to some of their studio recorded music after hearing them at Warped Tour, they’re equally as good live.

If you haven’t already, then I highly recommend listening to some, if not all of these bands. All of them are amazing musicians and they’re playing at Warped Tour for the rest of the summer.