Who: Nonpoint, (hed) p.e. and Spineshank
Where: 24 Oxford, Las Vegas, Nevada
When: August 29, 2026
Nonpoint, Spineshank and (hed) p.e. Bring Three Different Versions of Nu-Metal to Las Vegas
Twenty-five years after nu-metal took over radio, MTV and movie soundtracks, three bands from the era packed into 24 Oxford and showed three very different ways to survive it.
Nonpoint, Spineshank, (hed) p.e.
24 Oxford — Las Vegas, Nevada
August 29, 2026
There was a period when admitting you liked nu-metal could get an immediate eye roll.
The baggy pants, turntables, rap verses, downtuned guitars, tribal tattoos, questionable facial hair and approximately six million compilation CDs became an easy punchline once popular music moved somewhere else.
Nobody at 24 Oxford on August 29 seemed particularly concerned about any of that.
The room was packed with people who came to hear music from an era when heavy bands could end up on MTV between Britney Spears and Eminem, horror movies had legitimately great soundtracks and buying a new video game sometimes meant discovering three bands before you even reached the start menu.
Nonpoint, Spineshank and (hed) p.e. all came out of that world.
(hed) p.e. never stayed in one place long enough to become a time capsule. Spineshank vanished for years. Nonpoint kept touring until eventually the musical climate circled back around to them.
Put all three in a small room in 2026 and you get a pretty good explanation for why this music refuses to disappear.
(hed) p.e.
Trying to neatly classify (hed) p.e. has always been a pointless exercise.
Metal gets mixed with punk, hip-hop, reggae and whatever Jared Gomes decides belongs there at that particular moment. The band called it G-punk, which remains considerably easier than trying to explain it.
At 24 Oxford, Gomes treated the stage like someplace he had been hanging around all afternoon rather than the opening slot of a touring package. He talked, joked and moved through songs with the loose confidence of somebody who has spent decades figuring out exactly how much structure a (hed) p.e. show actually needs.
Then there is “Bartender.”
Released on Broke in 2000, the song has survived radio cycles, format changes and several generations of heavy music. When that opening melodica appears, recognition is immediate.
That’s part of what makes (hed) p.e. strange in 2026. The band is connected to a very specific period, yet its catalog never behaved like a traditional nu-metal catalog in the first place. There was always too much punk, reggae and hip-hop leaking through the walls.
A few weeks earlier in Albany, the band had gone even further into its past by concentrating its short set on Broke, playing “Jesus (of Nazareth),” “Killing Time,” “Waiting to Die,” “Feel Good,” “I Got You” and “Bartender.”
Twenty-six years after the album arrived, people are still showing up for those songs.
SPINESHANK
Then Spineshank walked out and everything got meaner.
There is something inherently strange about seeing this band in 2026.
Spineshank spent years missing from a genre they helped build. They came out of Los Angeles in the late ’90s, landed on Roadrunner Records and found a particularly ugly intersection between nu-metal and industrial metal. The Height of Callousness sounded mechanical even by the standards of the period: clipped riffs, electronics, Jonny Santos screaming over machinery and Tommy Decker hitting drums like he was trying to damage them.
Then the band disappeared.
Now they’re back.
“Asthmatic” opened the Vegas set and immediately established that this wasn’t going to be a reunion where everyone politely waits around for the two songs they remember.
“Synthetic” followed. Then “Violent Mood Swings.”
Three songs in, the distinction between Spineshank and the other bands on the bill was obvious. Their music has less bounce and more abrasion. The electronics underneath the guitars haven’t become quaint with age. If anything, the cold industrial parts sound increasingly nasty against modern production that frequently sands every rough edge off heavy music.
“Smothered” pushed into “Beginning of the End,” the latter carrying its own weird piece of early-2000s history as part of the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack.
That sentence alone can probably cause a 40-year-old man somewhere to start looking for his wallet chain.
Then came “New Disease.”
This is where the Spineshank reunion starts making considerably more sense.
The riff still hits.
Santos still sounds pissed.
Decker is still behind the drums, and his son Tommy Decker Jr. is now playing guitar next to him. Robert Garcia remains on bass. There’s an actual generational handoff happening onstage while songs written more than two decades ago are being screamed back at them.
“The Height of Callousness” followed before “Dead to Me” ended an eight-song set that barely stopped long enough to let anyone reset.
Spineshank doesn’t need to pretend the last twenty years didn’t happen. The years away are part of what makes seeing them now interesting.
You weren’t supposed to get another chance.
NONPOINT
Nonpoint has the opposite problem.
They never went away.
There was no dramatic resurrection because there was nothing to resurrect. Albums kept coming. Tours kept happening. Elias Soriano and drummer Robb Rivera kept the thing moving while musical trends changed around them.
Eventually the audience came back around.
Nonpoint opened with “Ruthless,” followed by “The Wreckoning” and “Buscándome,” and the difference between watching a reunion and watching a band with thousands of shows behind it became obvious quickly.
Soriano knows exactly what he can get from a crowd.
He doesn’t ask politely.
The band is ridiculously physical onstage. Hair flies everywhere. Bodies are constantly moving. Rivera drives everything from behind the kit while Rasheed Thomas, Jaysin Zeilstra and Adam Woloszyn turn the front of the stage into something photographers probably appreciate considerably less once they start trying to keep anybody inside the frame.
The Vegas set also refused to live entirely in 2001.
“Is It” and “Red Yeti” came early, two newer songs sitting between material from across the band’s catalog. “Chaos and Earthquakes,” “Dodge Your Destiny” and “Breaking Skin” followed.
Then Nonpoint started digging.
“Mindtrip.”
“What a Day.”
“Victim” into “Endure.”
“My Last Dying Breath.”
By then, the older fans didn’t need any encouragement.
And there are plenty of older fans now.
That’s unavoidable. Nu-metal’s first generation has mortgages. Some have teenagers. Some probably spent the afternoon before the show comparing lower-back stretches on YouTube before driving to Virgin Hotels.
Then “Bullet With a Name” started and everybody temporarily forgot about that.
There are songs that become permanently attached to a band’s identity. Nonpoint has several, but “Bullet With a Name” remains the big one. The opening bass line needs almost no introduction. Soriano barely has to start before the audience knows exactly what’s coming.
It closed the night.
Thirteen songs. No elaborate production needed. Just a packed small room, five guys moving constantly and a crowd yelling words back at a band that has been doing this for nearly three decades.
NU-METAL NEVER ACTUALLY LEFT
The easy headline is that nu-metal came back.
I’m not sure it did.
You can’t really call something a comeback when people never stopped listening to it.
Korn kept filling arenas. Deftones became bigger with a generation that wasn’t old enough to remember TRL. Limp Bizkit somehow became cool again. Bands that spent years getting mocked are appearing higher on festival posters while younger artists openly borrow the same downtuned guitars, hip-hop rhythms, electronics and oversized clothes everyone spent a decade pretending were embarrassing.
The people who originally loved this stuff also stopped apologizing for it.
That may be the biggest change.
Nobody inside 24 Oxford needed to defend why “New Disease” still rips. Nobody needed a dissertation on the historical importance of “Bartender.” Nobody needed to explain why the bass line in “Bullet With a Name” can still make a room move.
They already knew.
And this particular lineup showed three possible lives for a band after its supposed expiration date.
You can keep changing like (hed) p.e.
You can disappear and eventually find your way back like Spineshank.
Or you can do what Nonpoint did.
Keep playing.
Eventually everybody else catches up.
Post and photos by Kristopher West
Did you attend this tour? Comment below.
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