Adelitas Way: The most generic Vegas rock band ever to achieve national success performed adequately and forgettably, mildly pleasing the afternoon audience with electronic-ish new single “Sick” and 2009 semi-hit “Invincible,” which inspired a modestly sized moshpit and a somewhat listless sing-along. Give these guys credit, though: Singer Rick DeJesus lamented that the band doesn’t play its hometown often enough and announced a Monday-night free show at Count’s Vamp’d, also featuring fellow Vegas-based 48 Hours act Taking Dawn. So any rock fans who want to see the local boys live but didn’t want to shell out the hefty 48 Hours ticket prices can get the experience in a more intimate setting.

Black Tide: The contrast between set opener “Warriors of Time” (an awesome old-school metal tune from the band’s 2008 debut Light From Above) and the five subsequent songs from recent second album Post Mortem was striking and rather sad. The band’s new tunes barely sound any different from the toothless, interchangeable hard rock elsewhere on the radio (and at this festival). Given that frontman Gabriel Garcia was just 14 when Light From Above was recorded, it’s not surprising that the band’s sound has evolved. But the group that I would have been excited to see a few years ago instead delivered a mostly unremarkable (if energetic) set.

Escape the Fate: Only one original member of Escape the Fate (drummer Robert Ortiz) is actually around anymore, it seems, although singer Craig Mabbitt has been with the band since 2008 and is clearly an integral part of the group’s sound. Guitarist Bryan “Monte” Money recently decided to drop out of touring (although he’s supposedly still an official member), and bassist Max Green, fresh out of rehab just a few months ago, was conspicuously absent from the band’s 48 Hours performance, replaced temporarily by Zakk Sandler of Black Tide. Mabbitt made a cryptic reference to drunk driving, but otherwise the reconstituted band just went on with the business of rocking out for an eager “hometown” (for Ortiz, at least) crowd.

That crowd responded well, with more hands going up when Mabbitt asked for Escape the Fate fans than when he asked who was drunk. Even with replacement players onstage, the band sounded tight, and “This War Is Ours” inspired some enthusiastic audience chanting. ETF’s music has gotten progressively less exciting over time, and the apparent expendability of the band members isn’t an encouraging sign, but the 48 Hours crowd ate it all up anyway.

Hatebreed: Easily the highlight of the day, the veteran East Coast hardcore/metal band stuck out like a sore thumb, but in a good way. Without the frills or hooks of any of the other acts, Hatebreed barreled through a 40-minute set of blistering riffs, in-your-face vocals and fist-pumping choruses. The band’s die-hard fans were out in full force, chanting “Hatebreed” between songs and enthusiastically moshing and crowd-surfing. Charismatic frontman Jamey Jasta dedicated songs to some of the fallen heroes of hard rock and to the armed forces (a persistent theme of the day, with three other bands doing the same), brought a pre-teen fan onstage and engineered a mosh-off in the fairly small second-stage area. A festival full of bands of this caliber would have been a lot more exciting.

Hollywood Undead: These moronic rap-rockers are perfect for people who miss the glory days of early-’00s nu-metal also-rans like Crazy Town. Even all the way on the other side of the venue eating some disgusting $4 nachos, I couldn’t escape their toxic blend of Limp Bizkit-style mook-rock and 50 Cent-level bling-rap, plus one jarringly sappy Gym Class Heroes-esque pop-rocker. Somehow this all required four different vocalists to deliver. The worst rock band in America? Quite possibly.

Five Finger Death Punch: Throughout the day, KOMP DJs kept hyping up this band as being “from” Vegas, but the Californians are just recent transplants to town, having already achieved success before settling here. Still, they received probably the most enthusiastic crowd response of the day, and certainly inspired the most ferocious moshing. With heavier music than most of the other bands (except for Hatebreed), 5FDP had no quiet or subdued moments in its set, and singer Ivan Moody stalked the stage like a predator. There’s ample intensity but little flavor to the band’s music, and the members delivered their songs with grim determination. Aggression seemed to be the way to elicit a response, and there was plenty of singing from the crowd, although it was loudest during the dreadful cover of Bad Company’s “Bad Company.”

At one point it seemed like the band might have gotten a little too aggressive; after “Bulletproof,” Moody announced, “We just got told that you guys are being too violent,” and said that he’d been ordered to cut the band’s set short. Following chants of “bullshit!” from the crowd, Moody defiantly insisted that the band would play one last song anyway, and launched into “Burn It Down,” closing the set without further incident. From my vantage point not that far from the stage, the crowd hadn’t seemed excessively rowdy, and I asked a friendly Metro officer if the cops had ordered the band to stop playing. He said no such order had been given, and a quick web search later on revealed an almost identical scene having played out at last year’s Download Festival in England. Looks like 5FDP have a bit of a taste for the theatrical.

Avenged Sevenfold: The first day’s headliners brought out a full-scale stage setup including a giant replica of their winged-skull logo and plenty of pyro, but the set was a little anticlimactic, and the crowd started thinning out about halfway through. As the band’s songwriting has gotten increasingly ambitious, A7X’s music has gotten cluttered and inconsistent, and replicating some of those muddled songs live was not exactly successful. Power ballad “Buried Alive” came off as weak and cheesy, and the epic “I Won’t See You Tonight (Part 1),” dedicated to late drummer The Rev, was droning and interminable. “A Little Piece of Heaven,” with its ungainly tempo shifts, lurched from one part to another awkwardly.

But frontman M. Shadows (who wore his sunglasses at night for the entire set) still has serious rock-star swagger, and more concise rockers like “Bat Country,” “Afterlife” and “Beast and the Harlot” effectively got the job done. Shadows even continued the hometown feel of the day by referencing the band’s early performances at the Huntridge and the Castle. He had been resting his voice for a thematically appropriate 48 hours before the show in order to be ready (A7X even canceled a San Francisco date the previous day to allow him to heal), and that kind of dedication proves that this upstart festival is valued by bands and fans alike. Even at the end of a long day of rock, the crowd still got the full A7X headline experience.