The Warped Tour is defined by its contradictions. As one of the premiere showcases for modern ska, punk, and hardcore, the festival enthusiastically embraces the consumer culture that its music generally rejects. In fact, the whole atmosphere of the tour is contradictory in feel. Half the audience offers Free Hugs via magic marker advertisements on their stomachs while the other half reply: “Fuck your free hugs.” This spirit of conflict and discord for discord and conflict’s sake was definitely evident at this stop of the Warped Tour at Comerica Park. But, we didn’t come to downtown Detroit to analyze the culture that pervades modern youth music we came to rock!

(Note: There are a large number bands I could not cover, this was not due to any bias on my part rather, my lack of navigational skills decided what bands I would end up listening to. Also, any band of the hardcore, metalcore, mathcore, deathcore, peacecore etc. variety I have labeled simply “hardcore” due to my general ignorance of the genre and its subgroups.)

3:30 Arriving late to the festival, I catch ska veterans Reel Big Fish perfectly capturing the contradictory nature of the tour with their ironic lyrics to their single “Sell Out” Flanked by horn and guitar players, frontman Aaron Barett rocks out in his characteristic Hawaiian Aloha shirt. They close the set with quite an odd medley of covers: “Enter the Sandman” from Metallica then “Take on Me” by the Swedish pop band A-Ha .

Aaron Barrett of Reel Big Fish

3:40 I moved quickly south alongside Woodward and heard the lead singer of The Cab informing the audience that his favorite three letter word was “SEX!”. From what I could tell from my short stop at their stage the band played generally competent and interesting alternative rock, but the singer was prone to over-vocalizing his notes like an overzealous Justin Timberlake.

3:50 Next I caught the six-man hardcore group The Word Alive. The lead singer politely asked the crowd to surf and form a mosh line, they obliged.

4:05 I pushed through the crowd back to the main stage where The Dillinger Escape Plan, another hardcore group was playing. From what I could tell with my limited skill for appreciating hardcore, the guitar work was quite technical proficient in its ability to create the necessary and proper dissonance.

Ben Weinman, the founder of The Dillinger Escape Plan

4:25 On my way to catch the next band, I was walking behind a couple in their early thirties verbally debasing each other about what “pussies” the other was about not moshing hard enough. However, there wasn’t any problem with inadequate bodily participation in the set put on by Parkway Drive, an Australian hardcore band, they had the highest crowd surfing and water bottle throwing rates for any of the hardcore sets I saw.

4:45 Next, I stumbled across the Chicago pop-punk quintet AM Taxi in the middle of half of their set. They mixed modern pop hooks and old-school punk guitar drive with other allusions to the other forty years of rock music.  I caught hints of Green Day, The Clash, Sting, even a guitar riff or two seemed inspired by a John Mellencamp tune. Their live performance, which was undeservedly only attracting about 50 people compared to the 500 some of the bands had been drawing, was full of energy. They closed with a punk-inspired version of The Rolling Stones‘ “Paint it Black” fortified with extra guitar riffs from The Eagles’ “Hotel California”.

5:00 I passed the We the Kings performance. I stayed for two songs by the radio friendly, pop-punk band from Florida: the saccharine but still catchy “Check Yes Juliet” and another less catchy but still equally saccharine song I couldn’t place.

Travis Clark, lead singer/guitarist of We Are Kings

5:10 I caught the last two songs of the rock group VersaEmerge, one of the few bands with a female lead at Warped Tour. Both songs were filled with pop hooks as well as hard driving guitars. The lead singer crowd surfed throughout almost the entirety of the last song while continuing to deliver her demanding vocals.

5:30 The San Francisco pop-punk band Fight Fair was experiencing technical difficulties when I stopped by their set. They were able to fix it and churn out some decent guitar heavy punk songs.

5:50 Shorelines End, a pop-punk outfit from Dallas, was in the middle of a fairly slow, lame song characterized by over-emotional vocals and two guitar chords when I stopped by, I stayed until the end of the song then left.

6:00 Iwrestledabearonce, yes that is one word. The rare hardcore band fronted by a female, the quintet utilizes lots of technology from the techno world to create interesting new sounds to bash together haphazardly. The lead has some kind of voice modulation software so that she can scream lower and more grizzly than any of her male leads.

6:15 I catch the older punk band (read: over 20 years of age) Face to Face at the beginning of a good set. They are veterans of the scene and play music historically somewhere between the newer acts of Warped Tour and the first generation and second generation punk of The Clash and The Ramones.

6:55 After a good break due to heat exhaustion, I caught Alkaline Trio performing on the main stage. They played their hits and there was a good amount of crowd surfing going one.

Matt Skiba, lead singer and guitarist of Alkaline Trio

7:45 The ever-popular Canadian punk rock band Sum 41 packed their crowd into one of the smaller stages. The performance was high energy.

Deryck Whibley, lead singer and guitarist of Sum 41

8:15 Finally I saw the pop-rock band Anarbor. They are not from Ann Arbor. They are from Phoenix. I found this out later. Anyway, they played fairly catchy rock music although I could only take their vocals in small quantities.

That’s it for this year’s Warped Tour coverage. Check back next year, we might do it again.

Words: Eric Perkey

Photos: Chelsea Brown, SHEI Photography Editor