This guy knows what's up.
"Riot Fest sucks" has long been the festival's official slogan, slapped across countless t-shirts and social media comments for years now. Personally, I feel like it's the perfect tagline for the very online world that we all live in. If you just pay attention to what you read on Twitter and Facebook and Reddit, Riot Fest not only sucks, but (to put it scientifically) sucks hard. Not the specific headliners you would personally select? BULLSHIT! Any minor scheduling conflicts over the span of three days and five stages? CONSPIRACY AGAINST ME BY THE SCHEDULE MAKER! If it doesn't rain, it's too hot. If it rains, it's too wet. If you trip and scrape your knee, why doesn't Douglass Park have built-in pillows?
The good news? We don't live online, and live isn't a game of Strat-O-Matic baseball where you use predetermined statistics to determine whether something was a success or not. For an event like Riot Fest, you need boots on the ground (literally, and we'll get to that in a minute). You need to be amongst the people, sucking up the dust on the hottest September dates and huddling for warmth once in a decade when it can drop into the 50's at night.
This year's Riot Fest crowd was rewarded for touching grass with maybe some of the worst weather that we've seen. Rain throughout the night on Saturday made Sunday an absolute mud bowl with some of the worst conditions possible. But outside of the weather conditions, everything else was up to the fest's usual high bar.
The Headliners and Performances We Deserved
When the headliners for this year's Riot Fest were mentioned (Twenty One Pilots, Tool, Pierce The Veil), there were a lot of confused reactions to TOP's inclusion, which always confused me. On paper, they literally check every single box you would want for a top-line act, from popularity to critical acclaim to fanbase obsession to stage production. Sure, they may not throw massive crunchy riffs behind every song, but Riot Fest has a long history of headliners that aren't specifically hard rock (Beck, St. Vincent, Postal Service/Death Cab for Cutie, and The Cure just within the last three years alone). Honestly, I feel like it's a lot of noise from a small contingent that hasn't accepted that time comes for all of us, and the Foo Fighters and Slayers and Green Days of the world aren't going to be able to keep coming back forever, and new blood has to step up some time.
Like anyone could have predicted, all that talk turned out to be meaningless as TOP completely crushed their Friday night set with all the energy and chaos they bring to their own headlining gigs. And in a lot of ways, their performance was mirrored by Pierce the Veil on Sunday night, although during much wetter and cooler conditions. Both were stepping into the Riot Fest anchor position for the first time, and both had no problems filling those shoes.
Sandwiched in between the two was perhaps one of the most unique Tool shows in recent memory. Due to potential lightning in the area, Saturday's Riot Fest schedule got shortened by three hours, squashing what should have been a 90-minute set from 8:30 - 10:00 to 6:00 - 7:00. So Tool played their entire set before the sun went down for the first time in who knows how many decades. Instead of his usual crazy makeup/costume combo, Maynard James Keenan told the audience he didn't have time for all that, instead performing in a simple button-down shirt tucked into jeans. Cut down to just 60 minutes, the band tore through songs from every one of their albums, from 'Stinkfist' opening both the set and the mosh pits to Aenema closing things out as the first rains started to soak the grounds.
Age is Nothing But a Number
For a festival that tends to skew both heavy and young, there was a surprising contingent of veteran acts that look like a who's who at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction: Patti Smith, Nas, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Pixies, Morissey, Elvis Costello...all not only present, but absolutely kicking ass. Not only did all of these acts hold their own against their younger contemporaries, but holy shit, did any of you see Patti Smith?? 79 years old and still singing with the clarity and ferocity of someone a quarter of her age. And man, I may not agree with Morrissey on a lot of things, but the man can absolutely SING. Wearing a t-shirt of himself was a nice touch as well.
Possibly trumping them all as the Buzzed About Act of the Weekend was William Shatner at 95 years of age debuting his heavy metal band, The Fuckers. Covering metal standards like Ace of Spades and Enter Sandman in his spoken word Shatner cadence more than actually singing, the man was sharp as a tack and funny as hell and clearly having the time of his life. He mentioned that The Fuckers' debut album will come out some time this holiday season.
Who Has The Buzz??
Every year there are those bands who blow their audience away so much, you feel like everyone is talking about them for the rest of the day. Between sets. In line for drinks. Outside the water stations. "Did you see XXX?" On Friday that title belonged to Riot Fest veterans Foxy Shazam, whose massive stage presence paired perfectly with the Radical Stage's cozy atmosphere to really blow the minds of everyone in attendance.
Saturday absolutely belonged to Quebec's very own musical aliens, Angine de Poitrine, a band who had a bigger crowd at 3:00 in the afternoon than most bands have after the sun goes down. Microtonal weirdness was a big hit with the Riot Fest crowd. Sunday seemed to be buzzing about Shatner, Haywire, and Bowling for Soup...at least as much as the crowd could be buzzing about much on Sunday. Which brings us to...
PUDDLE OF MUD SURPRISE APPEARANCE
I don't care if everyone is making that joke, the lowest-hanging fruit of all time. Anyone who had to endure Sunday at Riot Fest gets to use it as much as they want with total immunity. That's how bad the mud got. I hesitate to even call it mud. I've dealt with mud in my life. Mud is manageable. This was not manageable, with the ground turning into more and more of a soup every hour that passed.
So how did we make lemonade out of those particular cold and sticky lemons? By giving up any attempt at staying clean and/or dry and rocking out as we normally would:
Once your shoes are done for, there's a lot of freedom in the world of a muddy music festival. The most pits for Arms Length and Mom Jeans became absolute spectacles. Hearing The Format cover Stone Temple Pilots or Alanis Morissette sing any song in a torrential downpour can be a truly spiritual experience. Getting sick? Finding mud in your home for the next week? Those are tomorrow's problems when today is all about having a Riot.
That's the deeper point in all of this. We can say Riot Fest sucks because we know very well that it doesn't suck. And even when things suck as bad as they did on Sunday, it's not so much Riot Fest sucking as things sucking in the proximity of Riot Fest. And what does it say that the music gods can throw the absolute worst conditions possible out there and it's still one of the most memorable and fun events of the entire year?
Ready to Suck in 2027?
Tickets for next year's Riot Fest are on sale here for a limited time.
