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5 MUST SEE ACTS AT INKCARCERATION FESTIVAL

Inkcarceration returns to the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, July 17–19. Here are the five sets we’re planting our feet for. Limp Bizkit — Sunday, July 19    Limp Bizkit close the festival on Sunday night, capping a reappraisal that once seemed impossible: Fred Durst’s crew went from industry punchline to one of the most in-demand live draws in heavy music, pulling pits full of teenagers who weren’t alive when “Nookie” first hit MTV. There’s little new music to promote and the set leans on the same hits it always has, “Break Stuff,” “Rollin’,” “My Way,” “Take a Look Around” and their metal reworking of George Michael’s “Faith,” which is exactly what a Bizkit crowd turns up for, roaring along the second each one kicks in. This year’s run also carries real weight after the death last October of founding bassist Sam Rivers, and the band has framed these shows as a celebration of his legacy as much as a party. Anchoring it all is Wes Borland, the greatest nu-metal guitarist of all time.  Shop Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water Jinjer — Friday, July 17 Jinjer open your Inkcarceration weekend on Friday, and Tatiana Shmayluk lands in Mansfield deep into the biggest touring campaign of the band’s career. The Ukrainian quartet have spent all of 2026 circling the globe behind their fifth album, Duél, from a 50,000-strong European headline run through Latin America and Indonesia and into a 37-date North American trek with Crystal Lake and Entheos that stands as their first US headline tour since 2024. The record’s 19th-century masquerade concept hands Shmayluk room to swing between fry screams, subterranean gutturals and the clean melodies that turned “Pisces” into a viral touchstone almost a decade ago. Look for “Tantrum” to detonate the set early and “Someone’s Daughter,” her tribute to Joan of Arc, Frida Kahlo, Marie Curie and Cleopatra, to land as its emotional center, all delivered with the groove-tech precision that has made Jinjer one of modern metal’s most dependable live acts. Gojira — Saturday, July 18 Two summers after they became the first metal band to play an Olympic opening ceremony, Gojira loom over Saturday’s bill as arguably the most decorated heavy act on the planet. That Paris rendition of “Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)” earned the Duplantier brothers a Grammy for Best Metal Performance and a spot at Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning farewell, and with a new album, their first since 2021’s Fortitude, still expected before year’s end, the Bayonne institution could well slip an unheard riff into the set. This year also marks a decade since Magma, the grief-stricken breakthrough that reshaped the band and earned them their first Grammy nomination, available now on an exclusive Lava vinyl. What’s guaranteed is the full-body physicality of a Gojira show: the pick-scrape squall of “Flying Whales,” the environmental fury of “Amazonia,” and a low end you feel in your sternum long after “Vacuity” brings it home. Shop Gojira   Machine Head — Saturday, July 18 Robb Flynn has spent more than thirty years proving Machine Head can weather any lineup shuffle, and the Bay Area crew arrive at Saturday’s bill behind Unatøned, the leanest, most ferocious record they’ve cut since the Burn My Eyes era. Guitarist Reece Scruggs slots into a set built for maximum whiplash, where recent gut-punches like “Unbound” and “Outsider” share air with the circle-pit scripture of “Davidian” and the raised-fist chorus of “Halo,” Flynn conducting the whole thing with the authority of a frontman who has commanded festival fields since the mid-’90s.   Lorna Shore — Sunday, July 19 Will Ramos owns one of the most astonishing voices in extreme metal, and Lorna Shore hit Sunday’s bill having spent the past year touring I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me into the ground, the New Jersey deathcore outfit’s most ambitious record to date. Ramos rose to viral fame on the pterodactyl shriek that anchors “To the Hellfire,” and live he reproduces that inhuman range with a consistency that has to be seen to be believed, from abyssal gutturals to symphonic grandeur. A Lorna Shore set moves from the Pain Remains trilogy into the newer eruptions of “Oblivion” and “Prison of Flesh,” each one a reminder that the band has spent the last few years hauling deathcore onto the biggest stages metal has to offer.