TASTE OF CHAOS: The Used + My Chemical Romance @ Stade Uniprix

By Nikkie - More Rock Than A Crackhouse - 03/03/2005

Take the essence of the Warped Tour (angry mallrats, merch and overpriced food), add to this too many scenesters and bad hairdos and a stage sponsored by myspace.com and what you get is the Warped Tour’s new sibling, the Taste Of Chaos Tour. Don’t get me wrong, the idea behind Taste Of Chaos was pure genius: a harder, louder, smaller version of the Warped Tour featuring the hottest screamo bands of the moment. The results however… not so hot.

First, on the smaller acoustic myspace.com stage, were a few lesser-known groups, such as as local band Florence. Sadly, these bands played very early on before anyone started on the main stage, which made a lot of people including myself miss these performances. One thing that was lacking from this first edition of ToC tour was organization; everything was everywhere, the coat check was ridiculous (especially considering that it was rather cold in there) and security was more than pesky when I went to interview Mike D. from Killswitch Engage.

The first band to play on the main stage was UnderOATH. They did give an ok performance, but it seemed like they forgot that they have more than one album and appeared very reluctant to play older stuff, which is always a disappointment. Then after a short pause, Killswitch Engage were on. Although I personally find that they seemed a bit out of place in this screamo fest, they were perhaps one of the good performances of the night. Hard and loud, just like it should be. After this, there was Senses Fail performing, which was very ordinary. However, I cannot comment much on their performance since I missed part of it, because I was interviewing the bassist for KsE.

Finally, the band I was looking forward the most, My Chemical Romance, came on at 8:55pm. They started off their set with a lot of profanity and their latest hit “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” off their album Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. They played an equal amount of old and new songs, which made it very entertaining, perhaps as much as the singer’s “weird” stage presence. To finish off our first edition of Taste of Chaos was the headlining band, The Used. They gave an alright performance, considering that most of their songs consist of whining and annoyingly catchy chord combinations.

Overall, Taste Of Chaos was definitely not worth wasting a Thursday night over. Nothing out of the ordinary, very short and almost boring sets from most of the bands. For a very average concert, I give a very average 6/10.

[More Rock Than A Crackhouse is currently on hiatus. Keep track of her on her Live Journal page.]