All our Riot Fest Coverage

By Maryam Hassan

UK Festivals may be coming to an end but the American Festival season is still going strong. We’ve got a few coming up and we start our US coverage with Riot Fest. Set in Humboldt Park in Chicago Riot Fest causes a lot of controversy between punks it seems, a lot claiming it can’t be DIY anymore when it’s got so big. We’re not here to argue about what’s punk and what’s not punk though. Riot Fest hosted a killer line up this year – one that tempted a whole load of us to cross the pond. With a mix of awesome new band and legendary punk bands we couldn’t have asked for more. Also, they have an actual carnival there, we can dig that.

We sent Chicago based singer/moany punk guy Mike Petruccelli and our local Chicago photographer Mat Stokes over for the whole weekend to cover the bands and generally show us what makes Riot Fest awesome.

To make it easy for you to find all our Riot Fest coverage, that’s three days of reviews and three days of galleries we are collating them all here on this handy Radar page!

REVIEWS

Keep your eyes peeled for our comprehensive reviews, covering all three days and a wealth of bands.

Friday
We give our thoughts on NOFX, Title Fight, Somos, Mastodon, GWAR, Stiff Little Fingers, Beach Slang, mud, chicken fingers, Orange Mohawk Guy and how to end a night Midwest style

Saturday
Mike misses bands because he’s ridiculous but then watches Say Anything, Descendents, Samiam, City and Colour and tries so hard to watch Wu-Tang (and fails). He also eats some corn dogs.

Sunday
Mike got grumpy during Weezer and maybe overdosed on Red Bull. He also watched The Menzingers, The Front Bottoms, Modern Baseball, Laura Stevenson and the Cans, PUP and ate a whole load of cheese fries.

GALLERIES

Our photographers were busy snapping all the antics across the Riot Fest site.

Friday
Our first gallery, featuring Somos, Title Fight, Pity Sex, Circa Survive, NOFX, Rise Against, Pianos Become The Teeth, Murder City Devils, Failure

Saturday
Our second gallery, featuring Anti-Flag, Buzzcocks, Descendents, Ex Friends, The Get Up Kids, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Restorations, RX Bandits, Saosin, Taking Back Sunday, The World Is A Beautiful Place and I An No Longer Afraid To Die

Sunday
Our third gallery with Archie Powell and the Exports, Weezer, Tiny Moving Parts, Tegan and Sara, Social Distortion, PUP, Motion City Soundtrack, Modern Baseball, The Menzingers, Laura Stevenson and the Cans, Bouncing Souls, Billy Bragg