Any band that names itself after a famous event in history understands that the majority of its reviews will begin with a summary of that event. But those who know anything about the actual Haymarket Riot of 1886 know that such predictability would not be in keeping with its spirit. After all, it was supposedly anarchists who really got the party started at the Haymarket, Illinois labor protest, tossing a bomb into a group of policemen and killing seven of them (though some reports blame the police). In memoriam, we'll postpone the summary for later and get right down to labor... er, business.

Haymarket Riot, not surprisingly, hail from Chicago, Illinois. The quartet has an aggressive sound, dominated by two elements: shrill guitars, which attempt their fair share of angular counterpoint, and the treble attack of the bass tone, molded into kinetic, choppy basslines. Every member of the quartet contributes on vocals; the band often employs a "team shouting" approach, with an occasional melody line mixed in for contrast (they've drawn comparisons to Fugazi, for good reason). As a package, the Haymarket Riot sound is forceful, disquieted, and genuinely intense.

The success of Haymarket Riot's song structures sink or swim with the effectiveness of the guitar/bass interplay. You find this a lot with bands that use the Riot's favored tones and textures. Independent of one another, the elements can sound pretty obnoxious. It's when the band hits on an equilibrium that they balance and perfect the approach. And when that happens, they achieve a sound both fierce and compelling.

Unfortunately for Haymarket Riot, they have a difficult time reaching that equilibrium. For example, on "Wax!," the bass and guitar are clearly aiming for counterpoint; they just never connect with one another. Other times, elements seem misplaced and superfluous, like the closing guitar riff on "A Needle That Skips."

What holds the band back most, though, is their impatience. Haymarket Riot will hit on an appealing theme, then move on long before the motif is adequately "milked." So it is with "(The) Fight." It begins with some pep as the drums warm up to a breakbeat, but the band proceeds to wander into a straight-ahead punk frolic, then later to standard down-tempo balladry. And at the end, they revert to more of the punk thing they started in the middle of the track, failing to deliver what the song's intro promises. Bad moves all-around.

Restless, shifty compositions can sound great (e.g. Don Caballero), but the changes, even when totally unpredictable, need to make sense together. Haymarket Riot often fails to accomplish this; they sound like they're messing with dynamics just for the hell of it, or out of a sense of obligation. Occasionally, the experiment works; "Technicolor Bombs," "Immaculate," and "Castor Oil" are all at least coherent. Still, even of those, only "Castor Oil" sticks with you after the disc stops spinning.

So, what happened was that the anarchists bombed the cops, which subsequently derailed the eight-hour-day movement, and led to the hanging of four people who probably had nothing to do with the bombing in the first place. Thanks to the Haymarket Riot, American industry had free-reign to exploit workers well through the turn of the century. And 115 years later, a post-punk band got named in its honor. Love those politics.

-Brad Haywood, December 13th, 2001