Chaos Never Tasted This Awful
By: Adrien Begrand |
Saturday April 14, 2007 |
| Taste Of Chaos Tour v.2 |
| A year ago I made my way to the annual Taste of Chaos tour with little to
no expectations and came away pleasantly surprised by the entire production,
not to mention a very interesting roster of talent. It was six or seven
hours of non-stop music, caffeine, band merchandise, video games, and
product placement, a veritable pop culture bacchanal for the teen set, and
a pretty damned exhausting, yet never dull night for the rest of us. Say
what you will about the grating sounds bearing the titles emocore,
post-hardcore, or screamo, but the 2006 tour had a surprising amount of
variety: you had the pop hooks of Thursday and Silverstein,
forward-thinking bands like Thrice and Dredg, highly popular
flavors-of-the-month Atreyu and As I Lay Dying, not to mention a rousing
closing set by the mighty Deftones, all bombarding us with enough good
tunes to make the show's lesser talents fade from our memories for good.
For the 2007 version, however, Taste of Chaos organizers wanted to simplify things by drastically reducing the number of acts, which would then dramatically extend the set times. It was a good idea, certainly, but only if the right bands were added. While co-headliners the Used and 30 Seconds to Mars were sure to sell tickets, musically speaking, this was scraping the bottom of a very, very shallow talent pool. Whereas 2006 gave us hooks, energy, and adventurous sounds, all 2007 left us with was forgettable music by overachieving bands, a thorough rundown of every single hair metal cliche that was driven into the ground 20 years ago, and a very bitter taste in our mouths. Oh, wait, that was the Rockstar Energy Drink, which, as per usual, flowed like water and kept us awake during the six sometimes inoffensive, often excruciating hours. I made my way into Saskatoon, Saskatchewan's cavernous Credit Union Centre accompanied by the sloppy din of show openers Evaline, whose generic emocore (thudding drums - check, skronky guitars - check, whiny, hookless vocals - check) echoed through the building, but it would turn out that two of the earlier bands on the bill would be the highlights of the evening. Michigan six-piece Chiodos clearly had the best musical chops of the entire lot, tearing through such songs as "There's No Penguins in Alaska" and "We're Gonna Have us a Champagne Jam." Vocalist Craig Owens possesses a shrieking tenor voice that borders on grating, but his onstage demeanor made him likeable, as when he invited two fans dressed as the "ratgirl" and "birdman" from the video for "Baby, You Wouldn't Last a Minute on the Creek" to join the band onstage for the entire set. California's Saosin, meanwhile, are budding talents in the genre, capable of strong melodies and dynamic songwriting, proven in their performances of "Seven Years", "Voices", and the exceptional "You're Not Alone". Only this time, singer Cove Reber lacked the magnetism of Owens, spending much of his time between songs grumbling about a belligerent audience member. Another bright spot -- well, not exactly bright, but lurking somewhere between dim and mildly incandescent, were New Jersey activists Senses Fail, who put on an energetic set dominated by their gregarious frontman James "Buddy" Nielsen. The music, save for the energetic set opener "Shark Attack", was a largely forgettable sceamo-ification of Jimmy Eat World's pop-infused sound, but Nielsen at least kept things interesting, making himself the center of attention, engaging the kids in between-song banter a little more insightful than canned stage patter like, "Are you having fun?" One of the night's funnier moments came when the openly bisexual singer sided with the girls in the audience, professing his undying love for Jared Leto. For the most part, however, it was a night of middling music and endless cliches. For some kids, all the shtick was new, but for anyone over the age of 15, it was nauseating. Aiden were the worst offenders, which is ironic because the Seattle band's pop punk isn't actually that bad, their much-lampooned shopping mall goth image distracting from the music. Despite such trite-yet-engaging songs as "Die Romantic," "The Last Sunrise," and "World By Storm," though, trite gimmicks got the people's attention. Lead singer WiL twirled his microphone cord. The guitarists spun their seat belt strapped guitars. WiL relied heavily on audience participation goofiness, and did the tired, "They all hate us but we're united," exhortations. WiL probably went a bit overboard when he blew his nose on some kids, but the kids who were lucky enough to be on the receiving end of some rock star mucous certainly didn't appear to mind. The entire band kept relying on such diversions as if they had little confidence in the music, which actually sounded quite solid. Still, Aiden had nothing on 30 Seconds to Mars. The success of Mr. Leto's band is actually well-earned, as their constant touring and contrived-yet-polished blend of post-grunge and emocore does have plenty of hooks, but live, they are one of the worst bands this writer has ever seen. The stage was decked out in as many bells and whistles as they could get away with, from Chinese lanterns, to multiple banners, to a gigantic drum riser supporting an obscenely large drumkit (because we all know how heavily post-grunge relies on blastbeats), to Oriental screens hiding the amps, to the red and yellow tassels draped from Leto's white mic stand. And when Leto hit the stage (following the horribly overdone intro of "Carmina Burana"), he was all energy and no substance, lazily strumming his shiny black Gibson Explorer before skipping to one end of the stage and back, letting the kids in the crowd sing all the choruses after thinly singing the verses, and spewing the same boring chatter the hair metal bands did two decades ago, with none of it sounding the least bit sincere. The girls especially were there for such hits as "Ättack," "The Kill," and the smash hit "From Yesterday," but each song fell flat, thanks to the smarmy singer and his relentless preening. At the age of 35, with his emo haircut and eyeliner, Leto was an embarrassment, looking like a rich guy playing rock star, trying to be as magnetic as David Lee Roth circa 1984, but coming off as repellent as David Lee Roth circa 2007. While hundreds of kids waited in line to have their merchandise hastily signed by a gruff Jordan Catalano, the stage was set up for the Used, and despite some arena rock bombast (the intro was arrogantly iconic), the music was completely limp, as the foursome started with the trainwreck of a single "The Bird and the Worm". I'll readily admit that the band has had a few pleasant tunes in the past, like "Take it Away", "Taste of Ink", and "All That I've Got", but it's hardly the stuff that can make thousands erupt ecstatically, and the rest of the songs epitomized the deflating feeling of the entire evening. New songs were carted out, such as the asinine "Liar Liar" (I dare you to guess what the second line of the song is), "Find a Way", and "Hospital", and if those were any indication, the band's upcoming album will be as big snoozer as this show was. Singer Bert McCracken tried to get the kids going one last time, but his attempt at a Lamb of God-esque "wall of death" was pathetic, and there was no way he could make the tired, bored folks in the side seats stand up. We just wanted to go home, which we did after the band mercifully ended their hour-long set without an encore, clutching our free cans of Rockstar Energy Drink, a paltry consolation for six excruciating hours of wasted time. Six hours of our lives were stolen by Taste of Chaos, but to paraphrase Hans Moleman, we probably would have wasted them anyway. |
