For fans of the Warped Tour, the winter months are usually seen as the off-season, a time to buff those Doc Martens or experiment with some Manic Panic variants. But starting in February, the young and spiky will have new reason to rejoice: the Taste of Chaos Tour.
Warped founder Kevin Lyman is the mastermind behind the tour, and he’s confirmed both the lineup and the dates for the inaugural jaunt. As previously reported, the Used are locked in to headline, but the rest of the bill has been confirmed, and it’s a harder-edged lineup than Warped fans might be expecting: My Chemical Romance, Killswitch Engage and Senses Fail will appear on all dates. Underoath and Saosin will also play a number of shows on the tour.
“We have 1,200 submissions for Warped next year, and a lot of them are these new, harder-edged bands like Killswitch or Senses Fail,” Lyman said. “And with these harder acts, they always seem to play on metal tours. Metal tickets always cost more. T-shirts always more at metal shows. If you’re a 14 or 15-year-old kid, and you want to see an established metal act, you’ve got to play twice as much to do so.”
Taste of Chaos will make stops in 38 cities in the U.S. and Canada, and with the exception of the few first dates in Florida, the tour will play arenas exclusively. Lyman also plans on an “early gate” policy for Taste, where fans can show up at 5 p.m. and be let into areas of the arena (including an acoustic stage featuring acts like Bleed the Dream and Opiate for the Masses). Ten to 15 minutes before the first band hits the main stage, general admission will open, and kids can make a mad dash to secure prime concert-viewing locations.
“It won’t be like a typical arena show, where kids come in and just mill around for a couple of hours,” Lyman said. “It’ll be like Warped, where 2,000-3,000 kids rush to the stage to catch the first band. And it’s a rush to for that band to see all these kids sprinting towards them.”
Lyman said that the goal with Taste is to establish a long-running tradition, like Warped. Unfortunately, that probably means that like Warped, the first few years will be lean.
“We all know that we’re going to lose money on this initially, but that’s what happened with Warped, too,” Lyman said. “I hope we don’t lose as much money as we did on the first year of Warped, or I’ll be living in the backyard, because my wife will throw me out.”
Dates for the 2005 Taste of Chaos Tour, according to the tour’s organizers (venues will be announced soon)
- 2/18 – Orlando, FL
- 2/19 – Miami, FL
- 2/20 – Jacksonville, FL
- 2/22 – Norfolk, VA
- 2/23 – Poughkeepsie, NY
- 2/24 – New York City, NY
- 2/25 – Philadelphia, PA
- 2/26 – Asbury Park, NJ
- 2/27 – Washington, DC
- 2/28 – Boston, MA
- 3/2 – Portland, ME
- 3/3 – Montreal, QC
- 3/4 – Toronto,ON
- 3/5 – London, ON
- 3/6 – Dayton, OH
- 3/8 – Toledo, OH
- 3/9 – Chicago, IL
- 3/10 – Cleveland, OH
- 3/11 – Detroit, MI
- 3/12 – Milwaukee, WI
- 3/13 – Lincoln, NE
- 3/14 – Minneapolis, MN
- 3/15 – Champaign, IL
- 3/17 – Kansas City, MO
- 3/18 – Dallas, TX
- 3/19 – Houston, TX
- 3/20 – Corpus Christi, TX
- 3/22 – Denver, CO
- 3/24 – Calgary, AB
- 3/25 – Vancouver, BC
- 3/26 – Seattle, WA
- 3/28 – San Francisco, CA
- 3/29 – Fresno, CA
- 3/30 – San Bernardino, CA
- 3/31 – San Diego, CA
- 4/1 – Los Angeles, CA
- 4/2 – Phoenix, AZ
