Taste of Chaos is a screamo/post-hardcore tour that was started in the winter of 2004 by Kevin Lyman, the creator of the successful Warped Tour. The Taste of Chaos tour was designed to bring in bands outside the usual punk, emo, and metal format that the Warped Tour usually caters to. The Best of Taste of Chaos Two double CD is due to be released on January 30, 2007.
A quick perusal of the artists on this CD reveals that a wide range of styles are represented, from noisecore to metalcore to straight up metal. Underoath starts off disc one with one of their typical genre bending songs. Underoath isn't hardcore or metalcore and they're definitely more than post-hardcore screamo. They're simply very good at what they do. "In Regards to Myself" careens from metal tinged screamo to a positively melodic interlude with some really good vocals. I saw them open for Living Sacrifice a couple of years ago and they played an incandescent set.
Metalcore is well represented by the offerings of Bullet for My Valentine and Every Time I Die. Saosin's "Follow and Feel" is an uptempo piece with nicely arranged guitars and vocals. Thursday and Taking Back Sunday present a couple of well done emo tracks. I really liked Anti-Flag's Press Corpse. I've always been partial to their brand of politicized hardcore punk and this is a well performed and recorded track.
Norma Jean offers one of their standard pieces of chaotic noisecore with "Blueprints for Future Homes" which is a track from their current release Redeemer. It is in my opinion a marked improvement over O God, the Aftermath. Helmet does well with their unique post-hardcore tinged metal. I have never been a big fan of Emery's stylings but they present a well arranged and performed "So Cold I Could See My Breath."
For me, disc one started to drag around track 14. I am just not a big fan of the emo of Bleed the Dream or the alt-rock of The Smashup and Opiate for the Masses.
Disc two opens up with the hardcore influenced metal of As I Lay Dying and continues with the melodic, Gothenburg death metal of In Flames. The metalcore influenced thrash of Shadows Fall is displayed by "In Effigy." Unearth offers some tasty hardcore laced metal with "Giles." Dragonforce plays their trademark extreme power metal on "Fury of the Storm." This is not a genre I am particularly fond of but I recognize that these are some pretty talented guys and they do what they do very well.
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