Taste the (Corporate Sponsored™) Chaos, Motherfuckers!
By: Adrien Begrand |
Thursday April 13, 2006 |
| The annual Taste of Chaos Tour, now in its second year, has become a springtime tradition among the many young rock fans in North America, a veritable Day Camp For Sullen Teenagers, where they can see a good dozen or so of their favorite bands over six hours, for a relatively low ticket price. |
| Emocore and teens with money: I tell you, it's a concert promoter's dream. The organizers of the wildly popular Warped Tour know this better than anyone, and their annual Taste of Chaos Tour, now in its second year, has become a springtime tradition among the many young rock fans in North America, a veritable Day Camp For Sullen Teenagers, where they can see a good dozen or so of their favorite bands over six hours, for a relatively low ticket price. It's a tremendous situation from all perspectives: the bands get to perform for and meet their fans (not to mention sell bucketloads of merch), corporate sponsors (everyone from Vans™ to GameCube™ to Hot Topic™ to MySpace™) get plenty of strategically-placed publicity, the kiddies get to mosh, pogo, and spin-kick themselves silly in a safe environment, and best of all for their parents, the children are out of the house and not causing trouble.
Rolling towards Credit Union Centre, the large hockey arena on the outskirts of the Western Canadian prairie city of Saskatoon on a sunny late Saturday afternoon, not only was it apparent that the thousands of kids in attendance were ready for a night of enjoying feeling miserable, but also that times have definitely changed in the tailgating department. This sure ain't your dad's 80s metal show anymore; instead of getting wasted in the parking lot to Priest tapes in the stereos of their old beater cars, two decades later, it's become groups of fey boys openly singing along to maudlin Thursday CDs playing in their parents' SUVs. Call this Intrepid Rock Writer jaded all you want, but this sorry spectacle, or Emocore Parking Lot, if you will, certainly didn't bode well for the rest of the evening. The refrain of What am I getting myself into? kept reverberating through my head as I sauntered past the Thursday-singin' boys, through the turnstile, and into the half full arena, where Canadian saps Silverstein were already whipping a writhing, packed floor into a frenzy with their bland, politely melodic brand of post-post-hardcore, alternating between tight verses that were thinly veiled rip-offs of At the Drive-In, and insipid bubblegum choruses that got the many young ladies in the audience screaming. They're a completely inoffensive band, but with song titles as nauseating as "Smile in Your Sleep," something was required to wash the bad taste out of our mouth, and the fizzy caffeinated piss of Rockstar™ Energy Drink, which was being forced upon all passers-by by a Jonestownesque Official Rockstar™ Energy Drink Street Team, wasn't going to do it. We needed some testosterone in the building, stat. As I Lay Dying followed, and promptly added some masculinity to the proceedings. One of the more popular American metalcore acts, the San Diego quintet has shown signs of becoming more than just a cookie cutter kiddiecore band by gradually focusing more on metal than hardcore as of late, the dual guitar prowess of Phil Sgrosso and Nick Hipa hearkening back to British bands such as Iron Maiden and Angel Witch, while screamer Tim Lambesis and bassist Clint Norris work the "good cop/bad cop" vocal formula well. Consequently, while their older material like "Forever" and "98 Hours" went over well with the fans, it was the more recent songs, most notably the stirring "The Darkest Nights," that showed how good this band can be when they apply themselves. The vast majority of the young audience was there for three bands in particular. Atreyu can boast being the hottest metalcore act in North America right now, their just-released A Death-Grip on Yesterday rocketing up the charts, and the reaction to their half-hour set was enthusiastic, to say the least. While they're one of the least original bands of their ilk, they work the clichés well, drummer Brandon Saller offsetting Alex Varatzkas's screams with melodic hooks, while lead guitarist Dan Jacobs displayed the kind of finger-tapping flash that yours truly saw White Lion's Vito Bratta display in that very building 18 years ago. The new material, especially current single "Ex's and Oh's," was well-received, but the biggest reactions were for the older stuff, especially 2004's "Right Side of the Bed," Atreyu's finest moment on record to date, proof that when you have a great, catchy song, nobody cares how original you are, and the crowd this night couldn't give a lick. Thursday, on the other hand, fell horribly flat. Singer Geoff Rickly, despite the effeminate voice, proved to be tough as nails, performing while suffering from a bad case of the flu, but his gutsy performance was overshadowed by the band's weak, flaccid, angst-ridden emo clichés, which they've been milking for a good six years now. Hearing them play their terrible new song "Counting 5-4-3-2-1," it was clear, in my mind at least, they can't go away soon enough. In the end, it was Thrice who emerged as the most triumphant of the trio. Clearly the face of the future of emocore (this, ironically, despite plying their trade since 1998), the Irvine, California foursome showed they are capable of much more than the same formula, as expansive songs like "Red Sky" and "Music Box" worked brilliantly, the band incorporating organ, Rhodes piano, and a very welcome hint of Pelican (the band, not the fish-eating bird). That said, they still know how to pull off a good punchy tune as well as anyone, and the triumphant "Image of the Invisible," which opened the set, went over huge, garnering the most explosive reaction of the night. Thrice has shown astounding growth on their 2005 album Vheissu, their appeal going much further than the teen emocore set, and it won't be long before they're headlining large arenas on their own. The kids had better get used to having grown-ups check this band out, because it's going to happen, they're that good. Probably the nicest surprise was that the show turned out to be one of the most well-run concerts this writer has seen in a long while. Right next to the main stage, on a small 15x15 square on the edge of stage right, was the MySpace™ stage, and while the big stage band was playing, the second stage was setting up, and when the second the band stopped, the second stage band would begin immediately, the musicians comically trying to play their hearts out while confined to an underlit space no bigger than a small bedroom. While that went on, the big stage was being set up, and the whole cycle went like that for six hours, without a hitch, a constant onslaught of music. For the most part, the second stage bands, for all their efforts, failed to impress, from the overtly earnest Adair (dudes, cool bands don't have to ask girls to come get their breasts autographed), to the laughably bad pop punks The Smashup (I kept wishing Agnostic Front would step in and clobber them for giving New York punk a bad name), to Utah one-trick ponies Broke ("Hi, we're fucking Broke"...har, har), to the Stomp-goes-emo Street Drum Corps, who pounded out painfully monotonous alt-rock rhythms on garbage cans for 15 minutes. However, one band soared like the proverbial eagle on that second stage full of turkeys, that being Los Gatos, California prog rockers Dredg, who delivered a stirring half hour set that drew from their underrated recent albums El Cielo and Catch Without Arms. Singer Gavin Hayes confessed to being sloppy drunk, but he still put in a superb performance, hitting the high notes (that's right, he actually sang!), as the rest of the band provided a languid, yet intense musical backdrop, the guitar squalls and screams of slide guitar reverberating throughout the arena. Tour headliners the Deftones were an odd choice to headline such a tour, their somber, yet highly muscular sound a complete contrast from the majority of the bands on the bill. To no one's surprise, their music seemed a touch anti-climactic after the spirited performance by Thrice, but still, the Sacramento veterans sounded great in such a spacious venue, those waves of guitars bouncing off the walls and ceiling until it sounded almost overwhelming. Singer Chino Moreno is an odd frontman, not one for chatter, with not much of a singing voice, but he possesses one hell of a scream, which he utilized often, flanked by guitarist Stephen Carpenter and bassist Chi Cheng, both of whom displayed a similar workmanlike demeanor onstage. Their hour-long set spanned their entire career, including such fan faves as "Feiteceria", "My Own Summer", "Hexagram", "RX Queen", "Minerva", and "Change (In the House of Flies)", but by the time their brief, but punishing set ended, I was beat, and ready to leave, as was the majority of everyone else. Heading out of the arena and into the parking lot, it was interesting to overhear conversing teenagers clutching their shopping bags stuffed full with t-shirts and free CDs and DVDs complain to each other and anyone else who would listen about how Thrice didn't play long enough, how Thursday didn't play long enough, how Atreyu didn't play long enough, how the Deftones shouldn't have been there at all. This, after a superbly well-run six hour concert, executed without a hitch and nary a wasted second, with loads of free stuff from endless caffeine to PETA propaganda to sampler CDs, meet-and-greets with all the bands, videogames, and inexpensive band merchandise. I guess you can't please kids with a good, well-run rock show anymore; as it turned out, it was the kids who seemed more jaded than yours truly, who, much to my great surprise, had fun. |
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