A rundown of Bonnaroo 2015's rockinest offerings

At last year's Bonnaroo, Chicago-hailing garage punks The Orwells declared martial law on the New Music on Tap stage, emboldening a sprawling mosh pit to destroy lawn furniture, stage-dive from lighting rigs and chant "Fuck Miller Lite" (the side stage's corporate sponsor) as security threatened to shut them down. It was total, unyielding punk carnage, and you probably missed it. Bummer. This year, Bonnaroo's undercard roster of rock, punk and metal bands will offer some of the most exciting, unpredictable shows of the festival.

Fourteen-year-old metalheads Unlocking the Truth act as a riff-heavy starting pistol as the first performers at This Tent, shredding through thrash metal as if they were channeling Lemmy Kilmister himself. For a more mature metal option, don't sleep on the sludgy, Southern gothic Pallbearer, kicking off Friday at That Tent. Pallbearer takes the slow, morbid trudge of Black Sabbath and lets it linger further. It's the closest thing to Sabbath you'll get, short of Brown Sabbath, the Latin funk cover band playing the Which Stage at the same time.

The old guard of festival-friendly indie rock arrives on the farm in the form of My Morning Jacket, their first performance at Bonnaroo since 2011 and second appearance on the What Stage. MMJ is practically genetically engineered for festivals with speaker stacks big enough for their enormous sound. Saturday's What Stage set may not be as epic as the band's legendary three-hour rainstorm set in 2008, but it surely won't disappoint fans of Kentucky-bred roots-rock.

For a younger side of Southern fried rock music, Alabama Shakes will pack out the What Stage on Friday, letting singer Brittany Howard's soulful croon lure folks into the main stage area. The band's recent sophomore effort, Sound & Color, strayed slightly away from their gentle, soulful roots and into something more explosive, making this a solid Friday evening choice.

Anglophiles with Top 40 tastes will want to catch Catfish and the Bottlemen and Royal Blood, who present radio-friendly, guitar-forward pop rock that leans heavily on hooks and White Stripes-inspired scuzz-blues, respectively. If the British Invasion isn't your mainstream jam, then AWOLNATION surely is. Have you heard their guttural electronica-rock mega-hit "Sail?" No? Turn a radio to the active rock station and just wait 20 minutes. Or, for a more danceable indie-rock affair that recently has dabbled in electronic flourishes, Spoon has been a reliable stalwart of catchy indie tunes that are always entertaining.

If you have to pick one band to see, though, make it Against Me! on Friday at This Tent. Although the band has toiled in the punk rock trenches for nearly a decade, singer Laura Jane Grace's transition as a transgender woman has invigorated the band with a ferocity that had waned over the years. Transgender Dysphoria Blues isn't just one of the band's best records — emotionally powerful and thoroughly catchy — it's their most socially important to date.