In The Loop Magazine – Riot Fest 20th Anniversary 2025

Riot Fest 20th Anniversary 2025 – Day 3 Review & Final Wrap Up

Sep 23, 2025 admin_bitlc Features, Festivals, Music News, Reviews 0

By C.D.

The third day of Riot Fest 2025 ended things with a whole lot of punk, attitude, and more John Stamos. Chicago’s legendary punks The Effigies blew through their 1984 album For Ever Grounded, setting the tone for the rest of the day, and killer, punchy sets from Weakened Friends, Dune Rats, and Zero Boys all followed.

Things slowed down a little as a massive crowd gathered for Chicago’s own Smoking Popes, who never fail to deliver a set of tunes that are hardwired into our collective DNA as Chicago music fans. Born to Quit in its entirety was a rare treat, and you can never hear tunes like “Megan” enough times.

While the Rebel stage was plagued with sound issues and delays throughout the day, it didn’t stop the bands from giving their all, and The Ataris, playing 2003’s So Long, Astoria from front to back, had all the energy of headliners in a set that flew by.

And while Hanson saw a significant delay, those who gave up and went to another stage missed one of several major guest appearances in Day 3 – none other than John Stamos himself joining the brothers Hanson for a crowd singalong of “MMMBop”.

Followed by Stephen Egerton of The Descendents—yes, you read that correctly— who led a cover of his own band’s “Hope” – which, interestingly enough, he did on Friday with Blink-182, who have been covering the tune every night on their current tour. (Is this the first time a band had the same guest on-stage to play the same song in one weekend? It has to be, right?)

A scorcher of a set from Screeching Weasel that saw frontman Ben Weasel decrying fascism and blasting through “My Brain Hurts” and “I Can See Clearly” alongside many others kicked off the second part of Sunday’s roster, and the one-two punch that followed won’t soon be forgotten.

L.A. stalwarts Bad Religion delivered one of the best sets of the weekend, and the band managed to tear through nine tunes including “Fuck Armageddon, This is Hell” and opener “Recipe for Hate” before playing 1988’s Suffer in its entirety.

There was no moment of pause between their set and what had to be one of the all-time Riot Fest sets—IDLES. One of the loudest, tightest bands you’re likely to see, it’s safe to say that those who didn’t know much about the British post-punkers walked away as fans.

Add another to the special guest category—Jack White coming onstage to play “Never Fight a Man With a Perm” was surely one of those only-at-Riot-Fest moments. (He was also a great addition to IDLES’ overall sound—Third Man collab, perhaps?)

Irish quartet Inhaler showed off why their star continues to rise, and vocalist/guitarist Elijah Hewson is an effortlessly charismatic, engaging frontman—then again, it runs in the family, so maybe that’s not too surprising. (Look it up.) That said, Inhaler doesn’t need the boost from anyone—new album Open Wide continues their run of epic-sounding albums drawing on multiple influences, and tunes like “Dublin in Ecstasy,” “My King Will Be Kind,” and the infectious, soaring refrain of “It Won’t Always Be Like This” were perfect for a festival crowd.

Much like Friday’s set from Blink-182, Sunday headliners Green Day have reached heights that are nearly unachievable by modern standards in the music industry, belonging to a class of bands who are entrenched in the public consciousness with a diehard, iron-clad fanbase.

When you think of Green Day in the 1990s, it would have been hard to imagine them in the same class as Metallica, U2, the Stones, but here we are, and it couldn’t be more deserved. Crushing a nearly two-hour set that drew from various eras of the band’s history—and on the 21st anniversary of American Idiot, no less—Green Day’s set saw the hits (“Know Your Enemy,” “21 Guns,” “When I Come Around”), the fan favorites (“Jesus of Suburbia,” “Minority”), and rarities (“Going to Pascalaqua,” “The Grouch”).

All to a backdrop that normally lives in stadiums and plenty of fireworks. Billie Joe, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool still have the energy of teenagers, and as one would hope and expect, there were plenty of political messages that resonated with the tens of thousands gathered in Douglass Park, with Billie Joe changing the lyrics to opener “American Idiot” to “I’m not part of a MAGA agenda.”

Riot Fest 2025 is in the books – and by all counts, it was one of the best in the fest’s history, which seems appropriate given the fact that it’s the twentieth anniversary and Chicago even proclaimed September 21st as Riot Fest Day by order of the Mayor. What a long, strange trip – let’s hope we have many more!