A Taste of Chaos Tour
Nassau Coliseum
Uniondale, New York
review by Stella Kim
photos by Rachel Rednor
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Tour a couple years back. It hadn’t been that long since Bullet For My Valentine made their U.S debut opening for Guns’N’Roses and made even more controversies and headlines after dropping off the tour with Rob Zombie, openly speaking about the poor treatment they received from the tour. When asked how big they were in the U.K., the drummer Michael “Moose” Thomas answered, “Massive. Just massive,” and I realized they were correct when I traveled to England shortly after, their smug mugs gracing covers of several rock magazines, including the venerable Kerrang! and Metal Hammer. Well, a couple years later and their latest release, Scream Aim Fire, has made number four on the Billboard chart and a five-album deal with Sony BMG has been secured, bona fide rock stars as far as enthusiastic teen audience and Revolver are concerned. So I went to check them out again on A Taste of Chaos Tour last month, to see if they’ve stayed true to their “New Wave of British Heavy Metal.”
So what did I think? What can I say, when I see boys in tight pants speaking with adorable Welsh accents, I can be a little biased. Especially when they play lots of guitar solos. I think they rocked, and so did the audience filling up Nassau Coliseum. I mean, Matt Tuck isn’t exactly David Lee Roth in terms of charisma, but I guess he needn’t be bouncing everywhere when he can obviously drive an audience into madness standing there and playing heavy-duty riffs and singing hooky, easy-to-sing-along choruses. Indeed, the band was almost inaudible as the audience sang with them word after word--teenage enthusiasm for one killer heavy metal band everywhere. A very intense connection between the audience and the band, and that’s something that can’t be taught and it’s pretty remarkable that the band seemingly mastered it with only two albums under their belt. The band opened with the title track for the new release, “Scream Aim Fire” and launched right into their best-of-best set, mixing songs off the new album with older songs such as “4 Words (To Choke Upon)” which received a thunderous response. The band finished their somewhat short set with the dark “Waking The Demon”, set to be the next single, leaving the crowd exhausted yet wanting more. I still appreciate their effort to stay away from the trendy metalcore screams and whines and especially their ability to write guitar-driven, balls-to-the-wall metal without sounding dated, imagine that. I’m definitely keeping a close watch on these boys and look forward to checking back with them in the near future.
Bullet For My Valentine has dropped off A Taste of Chaos for personal reasons. They hope to resume touring in May.
Their latest release, Scream Aim Fire, is out now on Sony BMG.
