Riot Act is the seventh studio album by American rock band Pearl Jam, released November 12, 2002, through Epic Records.

The lyrics deal with mortality and existentialism, with influence from both the political climate after the September 11 attacks and the accidental death of nine fans during Pearl Jam's performance at the 2000 Roskilde Festival.

[7] Similar to the process for Yield and Binaural, band members worked on material individually before starting the recording sessions together.

[4] Riot Act was the first Pearl Jam album to feature Kenneth "Boom" Gaspar on keyboards, most notably on the song "Love Boat Captain".

"[12] Cameron said that producer Adam Kasper created a "really relaxed" atmosphere and that the band was able to complete lot of material in a short amount of time.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said "Riot Act is the album that Pearl Jam has been wanting to make since Vitalogy—a muscular art rock record, one that still hits hard but that's filled with ragged edges and odd detours.

Bassist Jeff Ament commented that he felt that love was a major theme of the album, and Vedder tried to convey themes such as love, loss and struggle to make a difference because of the difficulty in leading with events such as the September 11 attacks and the much more personal tragedy of the accidental deaths of nine fans during Pearl Jam's performance at the 2000 Roskilde Festival – "You start feeling like, 'What do I have to say?

[4] Ament also told that "I think the time's right to turn our voice up a bit... And Ed did it in a great way, with humour and a mystical, magical approach.

"[19] A few songs feature lyrical collaborations between Vedder and other members of the group: one with Ament ("Ghost"), one with Cameron ("You Are") and two with Gossard ("Bu$hleaguer" and "All or None").

"[17] Regarding "Green Disease", Vedder stated he was "mystified" at corporate-management salaries and "how someone can justify taking that much at the cost of other people's livelihoods.

[11] The album's cover art, photographed by Ament, features two skeletons wearing crowns, suggesting the possibility that the two represent a king and a queen.

At many shows during the 2003 North American tour, Vedder performed "Bu$hleaguer" with a rubber mask of George W. Bush, wearing it at the beginning of the song and then hanging it on a mic stand to allow him to sing.

[26] Following a performance of the song at Pearl Jam's show of April 30, 2003, in Uniondale, New York, at the Nassau Coliseum, the band was met with boos from the crowd and chants of "U-S-A."

[27] The song "Arc" was performed by Vedder at nine shows during the second North American leg of the tour as a tribute to the victims of the Roskilde disaster.

[33] The album would end up selling only 575,000 copies in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan,[34] short of the 850,000 sold by predecessor Binaural.

[44] Music videos for several songs from the album, including "I Am Mine", "Save You", "Love Boat Captain", "Thumbing My Way", and "1/2 Full", were filmed at Seattle's Chop Suey club in September 2002.

"[49] AllMusic staff writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album four out of five stars, saying "given several plays, this does indeed seem like the richest record Pearl Jam has made in a long time.

The review said, "Pearl Jam's seventh studio album balances emotive bombast with a taut-sweaty hard-rock attack.

"[52] Rolling Stone staff writer Keith Harris gave the album three out of five stars, saying that "like Neil Young at his most deliberately despondent, Pearl Jam sound purposefully tired.

"[53] Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B, saying that Vedder's lyrics "rarely cohere", and that "too few of the tense rhythmic setups build to the kind of...catharsis that would be something to Riot home about.

"[51] Hugo Lindgren of The New York Times stated that the "record sounds as if it were made to slip quietly into the marketplace, connect with the faithful and leave everyone else alone", and that "there's no catchy single, and not even the slightest echo of anything else happening in pop music now."

Sweeting observed, "On full, Pearl Jam sound like Stillwater, Cameron Crowe's fictional 1970s second-raters from his film Almost Famous.

"[47] Kyle Reiter of Pitchfork said that the album "meanders from one song to the next with an overwhelming insipidness", and stated that it "[brings] them ever closer to homogenous bar-band territory.

[18] "Last Soldier", a live version of which was recorded at the 2001 Bridge School Benefit and included on the band's 2001 fan club Christmas single, was written by McCready and Vedder in response to the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001.