I have sampled the Taste of Chaos, and it tastes of teenage flop sweat, beer and the essence of concussion. When you have Rockstar as the sponsor for your tour it's hard to know what to expect. My initial thoughts were that the Taste of Chaos Tour, despite its mosh pit-heavy supporting cast would be an uber-commercialized venture with little personality. For the people sitting up in the bleachers who wanted little more than an evening of live music, that's all it was.
The story changed once you stepped down onto the main floor. Fist pumping, moshing and frenetic violent movements kept everyone on the main floor alert. Before I go any further, I have to come clean: thanks to ineptitude on the part of the Nokia Center, I arrived in the middle of the third set with only about four songs until Four Year Strong would cede the stage to Bring Me the Horizon. Learn to post the correct start time for your concerts, please.
Like any good punk performance, Four Year Strong did an excellent job jazzing up the crowd and getting them jumping about. Their set ended strong and (for someone who arrived midway through) gave me a good impression of the crowd's general enthusiasm. We're talking a musical mecca of angsty teenagers let out late in the New York night for an evening of thrashing. Four Year Strong isn't as much about the thrashing as Bring Me the Horizon, but it was an excellent set up for the adrenaline.
Bring Me the Horizon stole the show and, had it not been for the level of presentation bias given to Thursday, would probably have kept it safely in their possession. Their stage presence and audience interaction was unparalleled that evening and the mosh pit frenzy hit its 
high during their set. Despite the fact that I had to hold off the customary fist of "back off moshers or you'll get hurt", I was sad to see Horizon leave the stage. Their forty minutes helped repair the lull in excitement caused by the unfortunate between-set-gap that comes with the multi-band tour. The audience and Bring Me the Horizon fused musically and the final result ranks as the second-best moment of the night.
The gap between the sets of Bring Me the Horizon and Thursday was noticeably shorter than the one that preceded it, but even so it's a damaging period of time. The audience wanders back out into the well-lit halls of peddlers from rock labels and every commercial enterprise imaginable that can draw a loose connection between themselves and music. The enthusiasm built up by Bring Me the Horizon dissipated partially into the air and left Thursday with a lukewarm audience - that temperature where, if a hot pocket, you'd put it back in the microwave to heat up the ice-cold center to match the hellishly hot exterior. The crowd was enthusiastic for Thursday but not nearly as much as they would have been with a mere 5 minute break between the two final acts.
Thursday comes across as a preachy, almost cliché-presence rock band. Speaking for a minute before each song and promising the audience "an extra-long set" even if the tour organizers don't want them to. Bitch, please. The set wasn't extra long anyways and you're not convincing us that you're breaking any rules or defying authority. Where Thursday fell short in sincerity, they made up in delivery. The set was deafening and yet never to the point where the speakers just seemed to be squealing incoherent noise. The song selection featured mostly new material with a few older nuggets here and there to keep fans enthralled with the experience. To top it off, and I'm aware the basic premise behind this concept isn't unique, a series of gigantic gray balloons were released upon the masses. While the final result of it all was the obvious fans hitting the balloons back and forth, it was the initial debut as the strobes played across the advancing army of orbs that made the experience unreal. The mosh pit halted to take in the sight Thursday had unleashed upon them. The balloons, their slow movement made even more surreal by the blindingly fast last playing across their surfaces, made up a beltway of perfectly shaped planets. Thursday's music coupled with that sight made it the night's top act - even if they tried way too hard to fulfill that "to hell with authority" vibe that ceases to really work when your head sponsor is named Rockstar.
