All-you-can-eat Chaos

Correspondent Scott McLennan reports back about Friday's Taste of Chaos show:

WORCESTER -- The annual Taste of Chaos tour looked like another victim of downsizing when it was announced that this year's concerts would be held in smaller venues with fewer bands. But when the fifth annual edition of the show arrived Friday at the Palladium in Worcester -- with Cancer Bats, Pierce the Veil, Bring Me the Horizon, Four Year Strong, and headliners Thursday -- a packed house got way more than a taste of chaos; it got a hard-core banquet. Here’s a look at the menu:

The Jersey boys of Thursday, around since 1997, have long defied whatever label the music industry wants to apply to them. Not emo, not screamo, not even the all-encompassing "post-core" can corral Thursday, which just released its fifth album, the sharp and angular “Common Existence.”  The songs are thoughtful, powerful, and smartly constructed, and the live set Friday was genuinely heartfelt. The band sounded like what U2 might sound like if Bono wasn’t trying to be the Pope of Rock ’n’ Roll.

Four Year Strong nabbed pre-headliner status by dint of being Worcester guys who could attract a boatload of people to the Palladium. Yet they did not coast, delivering versions of “Bada Bing Wit’ a Pipe” and “Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die” that turned the theater into a throbbing mosh pit.

Decadent UK import Bring Me the Horizon wrapped its taut metal-core around themes of sex, drugs and mayhem. The kids loved it; the parents will hate it once they catch wind of it. The band's "Chelsea Smile" is a front-runner for “Song to be Played when the Apocalypse Occurs.”

With its meticulously tailored trashy looks, disjointed music, impassioned pleas mistaken for singing, and ironic cover tune (“Billie Jean”), Pierce the Veil was the most stereotypical Warped-core band of the night. Even if you’ve never seen this band before, you have -- at least if you’ve been to a summer rock festival in the past five years.

Cancer Bats started things off by turning punk and metal influences into a bit of raw lunacy that handily lit the night’s fuse.