Sunday was the final day of Riot Fest and much like the Sunday last year, there was rain. Thankfully the rain only delayed the fest opening by an hour, but the first part of the day was a wet one, but that didnt’ stop tons of people from showing up and not letting the rain spoil the fun and thankfully it wasn’t a flood situation or one that turned the park into a muddy quicksand mess.
It was pouring rain when Nekrogoblikon took the stage, but it seemed fitting for this band to make for a more eerie atmosphere. The band plays some pretty enjoyable death metal. The band has two singers, one of which is an actual goblin! They had all the staples of a good death metal band and they were definitely worth standing out in the rain for.
Swinging Utters has been around a long time but I can’t recall them every playing Riot Fest before. It was still raining when they played but that didn’t prevent the band from playing a half hour set of great melodic punk rock. The crowd that showed up for them was really into it as well.
Hailing from New Jersey, Gel was up next. The band is relatively new, having formed in 2018, and played some really great hardcore punk. It’s refreshing to have a hardcore band play a show of this scale when pop-punk is so popular and gets most of attention. Not to take anything away from pop-punk but sometimes you need something harder and faster to knock you on your ass and Gel did just that. This foursome (and eve split between male and female members) sounded fantastic and their powerful music even blew the rain away!
Cursive made a return to Riot Fest after last appearing here a few years ago. They opened with their amazing song (my personal favorite), “Sink To The Beat” off their Burst and Bloom EP and that just set the stage for a stellar performance. Cursive’s brand of indie rock is quite unique and they incorporate elements of post punk, a little emo, and other styles to create some really interesting songs that sound like no one else. That’s pretty. hard to pull off these days, and even harder to pull off and be this good. They make good records but they are an even better live act and you should add them to. your must-see list immediately! Please have them back again sometime, Riot Fest!
The rest of the day was all about the metal, going back and forth between the AAA and Metro stages. It was a four band run of super heavyweights starting with Mastodon! This wasn’t just any Mastodon performance though (which are always great), but this time they were playing the Leviathan album in its entirety! The band is celebrating the 20th anniversary of that beloved album, which is a favorite of many long time fans. Their recent, more proggy experimental stuff is fantastic, but getting to see them go back to their roots and play their most beloved album was the stuff dreams are made of. The members of Mastodon are stellar musicians, and all these years of playing slower music didn’t lessen their abilities to play an entire set of this intense material. They were on fire, and there even was fire! They blazed through that album and melted the faces of every person in that massive crowd. It was really something very special!
Lamb Of God were next and they weren’t about to be outshined by Mastodon, oh no! They brought their A-game and played an hour of their brand of intense thrash metal and it also kicked the ass of everyone in the audience! Randy Blythe is one of the most intense and energetic frontmen to the point that it is downright intimidating. He was all over the place on that stage, growling, yelling, singing, and jumping, all while the band put on a metal clinic. They didn’t let up with the intensity and ferocity the entire hour they played. It was tremendous!
Rob Zombie brought the theatrics and showmanship to the AAA stage with a fairly elaborate stage setup. When the curtain dropped, there was a huge metal wall taking up the entire center of the stage that said ZOMBIE on it and had a platform on the top of it. It was easily two stories high. Rob was on top of it singing the opening song, “Demon Speeding”. While this was happening, the lights were flashing and roving around and it looked like something out of a Mad Max film. It was impressive to say the least. When the band started to play “Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown”, Zombie moved to a lower platform in front of that display and was singing behind what has to be the coolest microphone stand of all time. This thing had bones, a skull and a pentagram on it and obscured Zombie’s body to where you really could only see he head as he was singing until he’d step to the side or swivel left and right. They had all kinds of cool video images being displayed all over the place too. From the third song on, the band played on the normal stage but you’d only see them as they stood on top of the video wall platform in front of the stage. It was a really impressive visual display overall. The band cranked out 14 songs in total, and saved the big hits for the end, and it all sounded excellent.
Closing out this year’s Riot Fest was how the second day of Riot Fest closed five years ago, with Slayer! Five years ago, the band called it quits and went on a farewell tour. They were the first (and only) band of the “big four” of thrash metal to do so, and since they were also the best of the four, it was incredibly depressing to live in a Slayerless world. Riot Mike has been known to work wonders over the last 20 years, getting bands to reunite when no one else could get them to and he worked his magic once more because Slayer came back from the dead! This was exciting beyond words.
After showing a 15 minute mini documentary about the band on the big screens surrounding the stage while it started raining again, Slayer took the stage to the delight of many tens of thousands people. The crowd went back as far as the eye could see! The band opened with “South of Heaven” which only made the crowd even more excited. Slayer sounded like they never went way, they were so spot-on that you’d thing they’d been touring regularly for the five years they were away. It was like time totally stood still. Everything great about the band was all there: the intensity, the precision, the crushing riffs, the power, not just any power but SLAYTANIC POWER, and of course all the great songs! The band played a 90 minute set that once again put them on the throne of the greatest heavy metal band alive today.
The setlist touched on many great albums and standouts included, “Postmortem”, “Seasons in the Abyss”, “War Ensemble”, “213” and “Hell Awaits”. If that wasn’t enough, when they were hitting the end of their set during the last four songs, the stage was lit up with two giant burning upside down crosses. Seeing these things made up of all that fire made you feel like hell was done waiting and had arrived! They had fire regularly blasting up from the stage too as they finished the night with “Mandatory Suicide”, “Raining Blood”, “Black Magic” and the legendary “Angel of Death”! It was a perfect Slayer performance and what a great way to end the fest.
The 19th Riot Fest was an incredible weekend with one of the best lineups to date. Everything about the fest was wonderful and not even the rain on Sunday could ruin everyone’s good time. Now that summer is over, now begins the incredibly long wait until next September when we get Riot Fest XX! Than you Riot Fest for giving us all the best home anyway for the final three days of summer!
