Various

Various: Epitaph Tour 2005 DVDEpitaph Tour 2005 DVD (2005)
Epitaph Records

Reviewer Rating: 1.5

Contributed by: AnchorsAnchors
(others by this writer | submit your own)
Published on February 17th 2006Here's a DVD of the Epitaph Tour of 2005, or as I like to refer to it, the "Take One for the Team Tour." See, what this tour does is gathers together four bands that I'd never want to see touring with bands I like, so rather than them being scattered and interfering with other tours, they decided to.

Here's a DVD of the Epitaph Tour of 2005, or as I like to refer to it, the "Take One for the Team Tour." See, what this tour does is gathers together four bands that I'd never want to see touring with bands I like, so rather than them being scattered and interfering with other tours, they decided to just all go together -- Matchbook Romance, From First to Last, Scatter the Ashes, and Motion City Soundtrack .

Each band has four songs to show their stuff, all filmed on one stop at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey. Scatter the Ashes was first up, and being that I had never heard the band before, they really did not make a terrific impression. The music is relatively forgettable, and the band's stage presence leaves a lot to be desired. The singer never strays far from the mic stand, and the guitarists stays essentially stationary in each of their songs. The songs themselves aren't bad, actually pretty varied, but being that this is a live DVD it's the stage presence that's most important, and there's virtually none to speak of.

From First to Last follows, and what they make up for in stage presence is lost in song structure and haircuts. I'm surprised their parents let them out of the house looking like they do, to be honest. All four of their songs sound relatively similar, and they're derivative enough of other music as it is, without actually ripping themselves off.

Motion City Soundtrack is this DVD's one bright spot, as not only do they play their older material, but they play it with more energy than anyone else on this DVD. Their catchy brand of music translates well to the stage, even if the moog player does go a little more overboard than a moog player should as far as thrashing wildly about. Throughout their set, they play "Don't Call It a Comeback," "Modern Chemistry," and "Boombox Generation" all with reckless abandon, and the singer sounds surprisingly solid in the live setting.

Unfortunately, this momentum is not kept up by Matchbook Romance. Another band with plenty of energy, and no decent tunes to fuel it. The songs don't stray far from the recorded sound, but the problem is they were bad songs on record too, and playing live isn't going to improve that any.

To make matters better, there's a decent amount of bonus material included here. Some music videos, interviews, and an extra live song performance from every band, but again, you'd have to really be into these bands to care enough to watch their videos or watch them being interviews.

The only scenario worthy of picking this DVD up is being a fan of all four bands, if not, you'll want to stay away.

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Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not respon sible for them in any way. Seriously.

Anonymous (February 23, 2006)

to the kid below

stop kidding yourself.....from first to last??? epitpah = shit now

Anonymous (February 23, 2006)

I think maybe the big difference is that Epitaph used to put out records by mostly established bands (New Bomb Turks, Zeke, Dwarves, Refused etc.) and now the average band tenure at the time of signing is like 6 months. They are taking some huge risks with these new bands, and I'm not seeing it pay off in terms of talent.

captaincrackhead (February 22, 2006)

"hey anonymous, post under your name, damnit! (j/k) maybe i was a little harsh on rancid, but the most those guys seem to have done recently is the transplants and casting pop stars in their videos. the less said about that, the better."

At least someone around here is making some sense.

lostcausegiveup (February 20, 2006)

myself-"newsflash fanboys, rancid were never much good to begin with, and mcs are the best new thing to come around in awhile."

anonymous-"that's really going out on a ledge saying rancid sucks. seriously, we don't need controversial statements like that being made here."

hey anonymous, post under your name, damnit! (j/k) maybe i was a little harsh on rancid, but the most those guys seem to have done recently is the transplants and casting pop stars in their videos. the less said about that, the better.

SilentStorms (February 20, 2006)

Well, not really. But all the 'major' independent labels are sucking severe ass.

SilentStorms (February 20, 2006)

Dear lord these bands are not my forte. I probably mispelled that. Good labels include Level-Plane. That is all.

miff (February 20, 2006)

i do admit epitaph are now signing shit bands that dont quite fot their immage but who cares about immage
but they ahve signed converge so i9ts not al bad

PoPSeCKeL (February 19, 2006)

Epitaph die slowly....and punk goes downhill years after years. I'm happy that Fat Wreck Chords is still signing great punk band...not emo crap....Lawrence Arms Rocks sooooo Hard.

Anonymous (February 19, 2006)

"You know your punk label is in trouble when all your good releases in the past year have been hip hop albums."

pretty accurate.

Or when the weakerthans rock harder than your hardcore.

wyzo

Anonymous (February 19, 2006)

You know your punk label is in trouble when all your good releases in the past year have been hip hop albums.

Anonymous (February 18, 2006)

This line from the review basically sums up Epitaph
"The music is relatively forgettable"

Anonymous (February 18, 2006)

"newsflash fanboys, rancid were never much good to begin with, and mcs are the best new thing to come around in awhile."

that's really going out on a ledge saying rancid sucks. seriously, we don't need controversial statements like that being made here.

lostcausegiveup (February 18, 2006)

first to last, eh, they're okay. can definitely do without matchbook romance. mcs, however, are the highlight of the dvd. saw them at the warped last year and they stole the show.
apparently the guy who wrote the reveiw is a little too focused on "stage kung fu". ie:mcs moog guy does too much, autumn to ashes don't move enough. if you focus on the performances, the bands actually hold their own. especially matchbook romance. (even though i'm not that big a fan)
from the tone of the reveiw it is quite clear you're "old-school", (who on this site isn't, or isn't pretending to be anyway), but just once i'd like to see a reveiw without the comments afterwards from bitter old fucks whining about how epitaph is "teh suck" now. newsflash fanboys, rancid were never much good to begin with, and mcs are the best new thing to come around in awhile.

Anonymous (February 18, 2006)

face it - MCS is no total chaos