Steve Aoki joined Taking Back Sunday on stage during When We Were Young show

This week Steve Aoki crashed the biggest emo party in the U.S. – When We Were Young headliners Taking Back Sunday invited Steve to perform together their latest collaboration in front of thousands of emo fans.

This weekend Las Vegas Festival Grounds became home to When We Were Young, the biggest emo festival in the U.S., where emos and punks gathered to rejoice over the nostalgic music of the 2000s. A surprising guest happened to join a band Taking Back Sunday – none other than the big room superstar Steve Aoki. Although his appearance might be surprising to some since punk and rock don’t often collide with electronic music, this June Steve Aoki and the band collaborated on the track ‘Just Us Two’, seventh track of Steve’s latest album ‘HiROQUEST: Genesis’ in which the American DJ went back to his rock roots and explored sounds that went beyond the former genre constraints he was known for. This worked in his favor, as the rock community and fans of Taking Back Sunday positively received the track upon its initial release, which translated to a lively singalong on the festival.

When We Were Young is a music festival which celebrates emo and punk music with its debut being last week on October 22 on Las Vegas Festival Grounds. In the initial announcement this January, fans were ecstatic and even doubtful due to announcement sounding too good to be true, but the festival had a turnaround of more than 80,000 young and old fans coming to enjoy the music of their teenage years. The festival is already announced to repeat next year on the same location October 21st. This year the first day sold out so quickly and the demand was so high they extended the festival to two more days. It is still unknown if this will be the case nest year, and who knows – maybe Steve Aoki shows up again.

Image Credit: Steve Aoki (Press) / Courtesy of Shore Fire Media