Rifftmas is a perfect name for a night like this because it promises two things at once. Riffs, obviously. And holiday energy, but not the gentle, cinnamon-scented kind. This is the kind where the season gets crowd-surfed.
This year mattered too. This was the 10th annual, the milestone version, the one that gets described like a family reunion with amplifiers. The billing and timing were all over the local listings for the 10th Annual Riffmas at The Icon, plus the calendar entry for the Sioux Falls Arts Council listing and the promoter writeup on the Collective Efforts Union event page.
But the real opening act wasn’t a band. It was clarity.
With my brother on sound, it was wonderful to actually hear vocals. That’s not a small thing in local-show land, where voices sometimes get buried under guitars like they owe rent. Tonight the words made it into the room. That changed the emotional math. It turned the night from “loud and fun” into “loud and felt.”
And once the room could hear itself, the rest of the bill could do what it came to do. Each band had a different angle on intensity. Punk as confession. Punk as surfy time travel. Heavy music as cinematic tension. Then the headliner set as full communal mischief, the kind that only works when the crowd agrees to help build the moment instead of just watching it.
Indigent and the pleasure of going the wrong way
Indigent kicked things off with punky vibes and powerful guitar solos. The kind that don’t politely arrive and leave. They barge in like they’ve been pacing outside the venue all day waiting to pick a fight with your nervous system.
The lyrics that stuck were simple and sharp. “Going the wrong way” is relatable for most people, and “the world is shaking” doesn’t even need a metaphor translator right now. With the vocals actually present in the mix, those lines didn’t vanish into amp fog. They landed as little public admissions, like the band said the quiet part out loud and the room nodded back.
They had that opener’s job of setting the temperature, and they did it without easing anyone into it. The solos acted like punctuation marks. The rhythm kept pushing forward. You could feel the crowd shift from arriving to paying attention.
Thought Patrol turns the pit into a pool party from the past
Thought Patrol followed and yanked the whole vibe sideways into something sunlit and kinetic. They brought 70s surfer energy that felt like a pool party from the past, except the water is replaced by distortion and the lifeguard is probably throwing elbows in the pit.
It still kept one foot in punk. This wasn’t soft nostalgia. It was surf flavoring poured into something that still wants to shove you around a little. Bright riffs, fast movement, that rolling forward feeling like the song is a wave and you’re either going to ride it or get dragged.
Then came the best surprise of their set. The swapping of vocals between male and female leads.
It was refreshingly unique in a way that changes the entire shape of a show. The mic moving like that keeps the set from feeling one-note. A line that would land as a sneer in one voice lands as a dare in the other. It also messes with your expectations in a good way. You can’t coast. Your brain has to stay awake.
Friends were tossing out references and they made sense. People were thinking of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs vibe, and that drummer girl from Scott Pilgrim energy where coolness and violence are basically the same facial expression. It wasn’t imitation. It was that same spirit of sharp charisma and playful menace.
A surf-punk detour in the middle of a heavier holiday bill is also a smart move. It keeps the room from getting numb. It stretches what “punk night” can mean without losing momentum.
Sinking Steps Rising Eyes and the art of the long whoosh
Sinking Steps Rising Eyes came in and changed the texture of the room. Their guitar riffs had pulse, their screamo edge had intent, and the whole set felt built around dynamics instead of just volume.
Female vocals up front, plus pianist and violinist, is the kind of lineup that can go wrong fast if it turns into pretty garnish on top of loud food. Here it didn’t feel like garnish. It felt structural. The keys and violin weren’t there to soften the heaviness. They complicated it, and complication is where the feelings hide when the distortion is doing its job.
Their songs had long shapes with pauses and whoos, those suspended moments where the room either loses attention or leans in. This room leaned in. The pauses felt like a held breath. The whoos felt like the air getting pulled out from under you on purpose.
If someone reading this wants a breadcrumb after the show, the Sinking Steps Rising Eyes Spotify page gives the general universe of what they do. Hearing it live it lands differently, because the pauses are part of the performance, not just a production choice.
Rifflord and the holy chaos of crowd participation
Then Rifflord hit, and the whole night snapped into its headline personality.
It’s worth saying plainly that the 10th annual framing wasn’t just marketing. It felt like a tradition night. The promoter copy on the Collective Efforts Union event page describes it as a decade-spanning community thing, and the room felt like it. This wasn’t a crowd politely watching a band. This was a crowd participating in a ritual that happens to have riffs.
And then there’s the drummer.
Stage 4 cancer.
That detail changes how you watch every downbeat. It adds gravity without slowing anything down. It makes the performance feel like a dare aimed at the universe. Not inspirational in a poster way. Just real. Just stubborn. Just there.
They came in with a big punk vibe, and then immediately refused to stay in a predictable lane. The flute came in hard, and it didn’t soften anything. It cut through the room like a bright blade, the kind of sound that makes you laugh for half a second because your brain goes “that shouldn’t work,” and then it works.
Then the Christmas tree became the main character.
They ripped it apart, paraded it through the crowd, and the mosh pit went nuclear. That’s the Rifftmas thesis statement. Holiday iconography, destroyed lovingly, turned into fuel. It wasn’t random destruction either. The night had been building toward participation and escalation set by set. When the tree showed up as a moving object inside the room, it felt like the physical punchline to everything that came before it.
The visual detail made it even better. Rifflord in all white. White outfits at a punk show are either confidence or a cry for help. Here it read as confidence, especially once treeness started flying and they just stayed locked in.
Somewhere in that chaos there was a “Free Bird” solo moment, and the tree got thrown at them in the middle of it. The words “tree thrown at them during the Free Bird solo” sound fake until you remember this is a holiday riff tradition night and reality is not always subtle.
By that point the room had fully agreed. Not just to watch the show, but to help make it.
Afterglow
Walking out, what stuck with me wasn’t only the riffs, or the surf detour, or the cinematic whoos, or even the nuclear pit with a Christmas tree caught in its orbit.
It was the simple fact that the room could hear itself.
