There’s nothing quite like a music festival. As long time veterans of Rock on the Range and Louder than Life, the folks here at The Music Pill were extremely excited earlier this spring when the first annual Chicago Open Air was announced. This brand new three day festival was held on a beautiful summer weekend at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, IL (a Chicago suburb). It featured a spectacular lineup of hard rock and heavy metal bands from all over the world. The Music Pill was there all weekend, taking notes, snapping pictures, and digesting all the music so we could give you the gory details on how the weekend went down. If you missed the action, our goal is to make you feel like you were there to see the magic happen. If you WERE in Chicago that weekend, then this is simply an excuse to relive the madness.

To get us started, this post will cover Day 1 (Friday) of Chicago Open Air 2016. We’ll touch on many of the great bands that played on Friday, and split them up into three categories: rock solid shows, slight disappointments, and mind-blowing performances. Because of the logistics of the festival, we can’t review every band, but what you’ll find is a thorough analysis of a multitude of great bands from all different genres. Friday gave us fantastic bands like Periphery, Chevelle, Trivium, Meshuggah, In This Moment, and so many more, ending with the almighty Rammstein as the headliner.

Without further ado – here we go: Day 1 (Friday) of Chicago Open Air 2016, you are officially under way. Let’s do this.