Riot Fest returned for its 19th year recently. After a brief venue switch to Bridgeview, the fest ultimately returned to their controversial continued home in Douglas Park.
Going into this year I had my own wishlist of acts I would have loved to see and honestly was slightly fearful they couldn’t top last year’s lineup. Selfishly it would take a lot for me personally to top The Cure, and now looking back at this past weekend, aside from the lackluster Friday night headliner, Fall Out Boy, I’m fairly content with their choices. The daily lineups were simplified so that if the festival goer only wanted to attend one day based on their preferred genre they could versus last everything felt intermingled throughout the entire weekend.
Two personal highlights from day one was The Offspring celebrating their debut album, Smash, and getting one last chance to catch Sum41 on their farewell tour. Saturday took the cake for the entire weekend for me personally. The lineup across the board was A++ from the start of the day spanning all stages. Waxahatchee was left with the responsibility of closing out the Riot Stage after Bright Eyes' last minute cancellation from the festival and did so beautifully. St. Vincent reminded us of her commanding presence and masterful performance and Beck gave us exactly what we wanted to close out the festival’s second evening.
One of the biggest highlights came in the afternoon with The Hives flexing their experience and doing it with ease in their signature matching lightning bolt suits on an extremely dry and humid Saturday in September. That heat was washed away on Sunday as we encountered a very wet and a metal-full day. This year’s festival closers were one of the iconic thrash metal band Slayer (!!) playing their first show since 2019.
There was plenty of opportunity throughout the day for some wet haired headbanging if you stayed close to the two main stages. Personal highlights for day three were Sprints, the Irish garage punk band, as well as longtime favorites Cursive and Dr. Dog (all three bands celebrating new albums released this year). This only being my second covering Riot Fest, once again the biggest winner for me is the people watching through my lens. It's highly infectious to enjoy bands that aren’t my personal scene when I see so many of their fans and how excited they are.
Until next year Riot Fest, and I'm sure between now and then the discussion will return where exactly we meet again but I am sure it will all be sorted out by then!
