The Continental - Hamilton College

talk of the townmusicmetalfor the massesThe line outside of the Armory in Rochester waited in tense,anxious excitement for the doors to open and Rockstar Tasteof Chaos to start. There is a good chance that the anxietywas driven by the cold, but that didn’t prevent anyone fromwaiting patiently to be allowed inside. In fact, there were somany people there to see the show that the Wendy’s a quartermiledown the road pulled out their rent-a-cops to make sure no concertgoerswere parking in their parking lot.Rockstar Taste of Chaos has always lived up to its name, and this yearwas no exception. Created four years ago by Kevin Lyman as the wintercousin of the annually successful Warped Tour, Rockstar Taste of Chaoswas created to bring together bands outside the usual Warped Tourformat—something with a little harder edge to it. Absolute pandemoniumensues every night in the form of violently swirling bodies, flying shoesand crowd surfers. There are rarely hard feelings, even if someone getspunched in the face. If you’re there, it is understood that you are there forthe same reason as the other five hundred plus people in the room—themusic. Strangely enough, it is the teenagers who are the best behaved atlarge-scale events like this. The only people I’ve ever seen start any sort ofargument are the twenty-something dudes who had a little too much todrink.So what does chaos taste like, exactly? Sweat, mostly. There is a pointat a concert where you can no longer listen with your ears. The decibellevel reached is so loud that sound bypasses your ears and resonatesthrough your frontal lobe and chest, sending your heart thumping madlyin time with the kick drum and your breathing into overdrive. This is theonly proper way to listen to rock music, and in the gutted interior of theArmory, Taste of Chaos achieved that brain-rattling volume. A six-hourmetal-fest, this year’s RToC featured some of the best in today’s metal andmetalcore bands, including headliners Bullet for My Valentine, Atreyu,and Avenged Sevenfold—all of whom have brand new material to testout in front of a live, writhing crowd.Originally called Jeff Killed John, Bullet For My Valentine has beenactive since 1997, and their newest album, Scream Aim Fire debuted atnumber four on the Billboard 200. BFMV is comprised of four angryBrits—Matt Tuck on vocals and guitar; Michael “Padge” Paget on guitar;Michael “Moose” Thomas on drums; and Jay James on bass—with abad habit of shooting their mouths off. The band was kicked off of anAmerican tour with Rob Zombie after Tuck commented on the BFMVmessage board about poor tour conditions. Scream Aim Fire, the band’ssecond studio album, is “a lot more up-tempo, a lot more aggressive”according to Tuck. The new single, “Waking the Demon” hit radiothe continental | spring 2008 19