Riot Fest Day 2: A Lineup Everyone Can Get Behind
Riot Fest on Saturday, September 21 was probably the most well-rounded day of all the three days in Douglass Park in terms of the lineup! With heavy hitters like Beck, St. Vincent, L.S. Dunes, Clutch, Rival Sons, The Buzzcocks, and more, it was hard for many of the attendees to choose just one set to hit at once.
PRINCESS GOES
We started off our day with a double dose of bands we’ve caught at the Michigan-local venue The Magic Bag with Princess Goes, who you may have heard of or remember seeing shared on ACRONYM ZINE as it is fronted by the ‘Dexter’ actor Michael C. Hall. The band has notes of Electronic persuasion but has enough of a rock vibe to fit in perfectly as a band early in the day to get us primed for what was to come. We were so stoked to catch them again, as they blew us away from the first show, and though Hall gets the most attention, it’s important to note that his bandmates have stellar accolades as well with keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen, who has been part of Blondie and Cyndi Lauper’s bands, and drummer Peter Yanowitz, who has done time in The Wallflowers and Morningwood.
THE BUZZCOCKS
The Buzzcocks, who is another band we’d just caught at The Magic Bag in Ferndale, Michigan and they were such a blast we knew we had to catch them a second time at Riot Fest. With a tambourine toss to the air, they brought the incoming crowd and were being exposed to an extremely well-rounded audience. Not bad for a band that launched in 1976!
THE DEAD MILKMEN
We rushed over to NOFX World to catch The Dead Milkmen, who are a band that formed in 1983, disbanded for a bit, and got back together in around 2008, and have been kickin’ it out since. The band, which is from Philidelphia, Pennsylvania is a staple in Punk Rock culture, evident from their biggest single “Punk Rock Girl.” Knowing their name that floated around in the circles in Detroit and how hard it is to buy a vinyl of theirs out here, we knew we had to catch what we could of their set during the day. One of the main draws to visiting the NOFX World stage is how well the stage was curated with icons from all eras of Punk, and this is probably one of those rare moments we could catch all these heavy-hitters in one place.
SIR CHLOE
Sir Chloe began in 2017 and notes that one of their major influences is Cage The Elephant. That’s enough for us to notice and learn about this band who we’d never encountered prior to Riot Fest. Dana Foote’s style was what drew us in, and we kept our focus mostly on them as they were performing. According to their Wikipedia page, “Sir Chloe gained widespread popularity when their song ‘Michelle’ went viral on the video sharing application TikTok,” as well as releasing a cover of Lou Reed’s “Femme Fatale.” We definitely recommend checking out their catalog because they were super entertaining at Riot Fest and had a definite vibe, despite us not knowing much about them.
THE HIVES
The Hives are iconic if you were into the early 2000s garage rock boom and 2010’s “indie sleaze movement,” as it’s been dubbed by the internet. During the times of hyper-colorful iPod commercials, these guys fit right in, but that doesn’t mean that they visibly give a throwback vibe to their performance. Frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist hopped on the mic during the first three songs to note that he wasn’t being as physical in terms of his crazy jumps and stuff due to having an injury with his ankle, but that barely stopped him from standing in different sketchy areas of the stage like speakers, swinging his mic around, and even doing a few high kicks. The band’s energy is still unmatched with their performance and threw down tracks we knew and loved like “Hate To Say I Told You So,” “Tick Tick Boom,” and “Come On!” It made us get a hyper-focus on their setlist after we returned home to Detroit for sure.
RIVAL SONS
Rival Sons is a staple of our hometown radio station, so we’ve caught them once before at Pine Knob, but given that they were on tour with Clutch this season, we were able to snag a quick song or two before rushing our way to the next set. They have a rockabilly-esque style in their performance and delivery, while also somehow fringing a throwback revival to that sound while also feeling slightly 70’s retro. Some of the highlight tracks from their set included “Do Your Worst,” “Electric Man,” and “Secret.”
HEALTH
Health is a band we wanted to catch for some time, and Timothy J. Seppla covered them for ACRONYM ZINE back in March 2024 in the moody Majestic Theatre in Detroit. The difference with our set was they were in broad daylight, which I will admit felt very weird with how their music sounds. Still, it was great to capture them with ease as they played their first few songs of the set with no lighting issues, and we loved feeling the bass in our chest. Sadly, their setlist was not uploaded, but we highly recommend taking a spin through their catalog, especially if you’re into what one of the other journalists called “dark horny vibes” while walking into the photo pit.
CLUTCH
Clutch is a force to be reckoned with. While I would have loved to have heard my ‘Blast Tyrant’ favorite “Cypress Grove,” we did get “The Mob Goes Wild,” and I was exposed to many new songs I hadn’t focused on from their catalog during my Spotify dive on the way to Chicago. Due to this, I am now completely obsessed with the songs they played off ‘Psychic Warfare’ including “X-Ray Visions” and “Firebirds.” The other shocker to their 10-song set? They didn’t happen to play arguably one of their biggest set-enders, “Spacegrass,” but that didn’t stop the crowd from toking up on the grounds or cracking open a Wynk drink to get 5mg of THC to the dome.
Frontman Neil Fallon is a ball of energy and makes up for the rest of the band focusing on their instrumentation, almost like a southern preacher pointing to the crowd and engaging like he’s talking directly to you. A few times, it felt like he was singing directly to me as I was in the photo pit, and having that type of focused power with the ferocity of his voice, it’s hard to walk away from a performance like that and not think “fuck yeah, that’s real rock and roll.” Out of all the sets we saw at Riot Fest over the weekend, this was the one we stayed and watched from beginning to end, and luckily we didn’t have any time conflicts with other bands so we could really enjoy it.
SINCERE ENGINEER
We caught the back half of Sincere Engineer’s set at Riot Fest, so we snapped some photos from the crowd as they performed some of their key tracks including “California King,” “Fireplace,” “Overbite,” and “Trust Me.” Given that they are a Chicago rock band, their fans packed it in for this set, and the fans were belting out the tracks back to frontwoman Deanna Belos. We’d caught them once before on a Sad Summer Fest back home, so it was great to see more tracks from them and to see one of the few female-fronted bands on the weekend’s lineup.
BASEMENT
To our surprise, we were able to catch Basement two times within a 12-hour span, as we also were able to cover their Riot Fest Late Night aftershow at Bottom Lounge. We weren’t complaining though, because we were able to capture both vibes of the band, both a perfectly golden hour set on the Radical Stage, and a darkened and packed venue with fans screaming their lyrics back at them. Admittedly, there were fewer crowd surfers at Riot Fest than at the Bottom Lounge show, so we were able to capture crispy images while hearing tracks like “Whole,” “Bad Apple,” and “Earl Grey” up close and personal. They ended their set with favorites “Pine,” which is the first track we heard by them, and “Covet,” which seems to be the most well-known track to the fans that attended the set. We’ll fully admit that since these two sets, we’ve been heavily listening to them, despite how it may be causing us to take a hit on our mental health moving into fall (they are super sad, but OH SO GOOD).
LAGWAGON
We’ll fully admit, we’re slowly trying to work our way through covering bands that appeared on the Tony Hawk Pro Skater Soundtrack. This is what brought us to Lagwagon’s set, to catch “May 16” played live, but we stuck around and were impressed with their performance as they kicked through other highlight tracks like “Kids Don’t Like To Share,” “Violins,” and “Making Friends” during their first 3 songs. They also covered “Brown Eyed Girl” from Van Morrison and one of their other banger tracks that we loved back in the day called “E Dagger,” while bringing out Erin “E Dagger” Burkett to sing her part — making this set at Riot Fest a little more special.
DESCENDANTS
We didn’t get to see all of the Descendants set, but we caught a few songs before rushing our way to L.S. Dunes. We wanted to see them as they’re such an iconic band in the Punk lexicon, and we’ve unfortunately missed them every time they passed through Detroit. Playing on the NOFX World stage, they powered through 29 tracks, including “Everything Sux,” “Rotting Out,” “When I Get Old,” “Coffee Mug,” and ending with “Smile.”
L.S. DUNES
The supergroup L.S. Dunes was a new experience for us, and out of all the bands that it’s formed from including members of My Chemical Romance, Coheed & Cambria, and Thursday, the one we’ve never witnessed live is the gorgeous singing of Anthony Green. He has fronted multiple bands over the years including Saosin, The Sound of Animals Fighting, Circa Survive, and also running a solo career, and we’ve somehow between all those bands never been able to capture him until this date. Green walked around the Riot Fest campus earlier in the day playing the newest L.S. Dunes single “Fatal Deluxe” for attendees on the property and captured it all on video, which was a perfect way to boots-on-the-ground get people to the set. Not that they needed it though, as their legendary combined careers brought in all the hype desired.
We have our own special story with this set. A few weeks before the set, Green had sent out a post on Threads that he didn’t encourage people to crowd surf, but if they did, he asked for people to bring vegetarian snacks for him. Ami Nicole ACRONYM (me) took this to heart and was able to get veggie straws and vegan cookies to him via a staff member, to which Green confirmed he received them and liked the cookies the best. Additionally, I shared our teaser photos on Instagram, and the L.S. Dunes account, Anthony Green and Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance) shared the post to their stories. Thanks, fellas!
NOFX
We captured NOFX at their last club date in Detroit, and it was such a stellar display, that we knew we had to dedicate at least one of the three nights of the festival to seeing them one last time. Our dear friend Sherburt, who is one of NOFX’s photographers was also working, so we made sure to capture him doing what he does best on stage while seeing this iconic band that’s been one of the Mount Rushmore’s of Punk Rock, and seems to be the keeper of the keys in terms of preserving the history of it. In addition to their pop-up in Riot Land, and their NOFX World Stage, the band’s frontman Fat Mike also launched a Punk Rock Museum which opened on April 1, 2023 in Las Vegas, which we would love to visit someday. We’re truthfully going to miss these silly guys, and seeing them in this element with all their fans from all over was the best-case scenario to close out our history with them.
TAKING BACK SUNDAY