“Each band you see this weekend, not directly, has been influenced by the Treatment,” says Davey Havok from his signature riser, positioned useless heart on the Riot Fest’s essential stage, as he appears to be like over the mud-splattered crowd. Relating to AFI, there’s actually no argument on the contrary — frontman Havok has by no means been one to shrink back from eyeliner, and his Instagram web page is persistently populated with footage of Robert Smith. However after three days at Riot Fest, whereas not all pay tribute as vocally or visually as Havok, his evaluation of the invoice rings true.
Learn extra: The Aquadolls embody fashion on and off the stage
The Treatment, the darkish and brooding cherry on high of a wet weekend, who performed the competition’s last set Sunday night time, have been a cornerstone of other music and tradition — one of many first bands of its form to interrupt, earlier than different had hit the mainstream — and a ringleader within the post-punk motion and founding father of the gothic rock style. Whether or not we’re speaking in regards to the first waves of emo or modern hardcore, the Treatment’s adamantly nonconformist angle, gut-punching basslines, and gloriously addictive whine with which Smith delivers such heartbreaking lyricism has left its mark, nevertheless not directly, on these within the business making their method outdoors of the mainstream.
All that’s to say, relating to artists who refuse to be boxed in, Riot Fest is, 12 months after 12 months, replete with the most effective. And this 12 months, from the Breeders to Loss of life Cab for Cutie, Turnstile to Ani DiFranco — we have been actually amongst different royalty, in each form and type. Although the highlights are too many to incorporate, we witnessed a slice of pizza crowd-surfed to L.S. Dunes vocalist Anthony Inexperienced — an homage to the slice he’d been surfed at a Circa Survive present years earlier — we have been doused with rain and Faygo throughout an unruly and unforgettable ICP set, and watched Corey Feldman take notes from Bert McCracken, ripping off his holographic sequin shirt onstage.
Album play was a theme for a lot of bands on the invoice this 12 months, the Deal sisters performing the whole lot, “even the bizarre ones,” from their band the Breeders’ Final Splash, Loss of life Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service working by way of Transatlanticism and Give Up, Glassjaw’s Daryl Palumbo enjoying by way of 2004’s Decadence along with his group Head Automatica. Nevertheless, there was nothing trite or cute about these nostalgic moments — every band introduced actual warmth, cementing their impeccable sound in each the previous and current for an expertise that was each deeply emotional, sonically spectacular, and an enormous reminder that although we’ve chosen to dive into the panorama of all issues different, its truest depths are but to be found. And we hope they by no means will.
With Zach Hill’s immaculate drumming throughout the Loss of life Grips set, Excessive Vis frontman Graham Sayle’s sprightly hardcore excessive kicks, or 100 gecs’ capacity to move an exhausted, damp viewers to a different, far weirder and extra great place and time — this Riot Fest was one for the books. And although it won’t be the stems of “Simply Like Heaven” that ties a devoted, unimaginable social activist and folk-rock legend like DiFranco to Dave Grohl, from set to set it was made evident that the thread tying every artist in Chicago collectively, identical to Smith, refuses to be categorized — and relatively, chooses to give attention to honesty, authenticity, and by no means shying away from the darkness.
