Over the Halloweekend, this writer made the trek out to the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, California, for the return of Insomniac’s Escape Halloween music festival after having to skip last year’s festivities due to the ongoing pandemic, and for both nights, I had an absolutely incredible experience that renewed my Halloween spirit and further fueled my love for electronic music.
On Friday night, we made our way through thousands and thousands of attendees as we descended upon the NOS grounds that were fully decked out for Halloween, and we spent most of our evening at the Grimm Stage, where the triple threat lineup of Eric Prydz, The Chainsmokers, and DJ Snake capped off the evening and nearly blew the roof off the outdoor venue. Considering this was my first live music event post-pandemic, it was just nice to immerse myself in all things EDM for the evening after all these months. We also caught most of the set from Lady Faith over at the Sanitarium stage that night before heading to The Grimm, and as a new fan of hers, she totally blew me away with her performance at Escape Halloween.
Saturday night, our focus was a bit more on the Halloween vibes, as we spent more time hanging around the various themed areas at Escape, like Crazytown and the Psycho Circus grounds where attendees could take in a show, speak to fortune tellers and tarot card readers, or just hang out with some of the circus freaks roaming about the grounds. Later in the evening, we decided to check out an array of sets going on, including VNSSA (who ruled), Cirez D (aka Eric Prydz), and then we wrapped the night stage hopping between Adam Beyer, Tchami, and Jauz to close out our Escape Halloween 2021 experience.
Over the last few years, Escape has become our favorite Halloween tradition, and it was so great to get back there for 2021 and get some semblance of normalcy back after the last 18 months or so. I loved all the new locale additions that were made to the layout of Escape Halloween, and these enhancements really added some new flavor to the always killer atmosphere that Insomniac creates with their Escape event each and every year.
Check out our Escape Halloween 2021 photo gallery below!
All photos by Brian Smith:
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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