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Gallows at the the Vans Warped Tour in Vancouver. Rebecca Blissett photo.

Vans Warped Tour At Thunderbird Stadium on Friday, August 14

Normally, it’s the kind of shit bands half-heartedly pull at the end of a set, right before they retreat to the tour bus to unwind with the underage groupies, a bottle of Jack, and a Ziploc full of crank. In a performance that everyone who was there will be talking about for weeks—and, quite possibly, years—to come, Gallows put a twist on things. Fuck waiting until the encore to jump into the crowd and get dirty with the unwashed masses, the pride of England left the stage one song in.

Well, that’s not totally true. For logistical reasons, Lee Barratt remained anchored to the drum riser, and bassist Stuart Gili-Ross evidently decided it was only polite to keep him company. As for the rest of Gallows, there were carrot-topped singer Frank Carter and guitarists Stephen Carter and Laurent “Lags” Barnard right in the middle of the pit, which proved the perfect place to fuel the insanity that followed. And yes, insane is the only way to describe things. You wanted nuts on a day when the overwhelming majority of acts on the Warped Tour played things all too safe? Well, start with the three ripping into “London Is the Reason” as they dug in on Thunderbird Stadium’s grass field, hundreds of kids losing their shit right before their eyes. More impressive was Frank Carter orchestrating a giant circle pit during “Death Voices”. As for the full-on wall of death—which literally had to be seen to be believed—well, we’ll come back to that later.

Backing up a few hours, there was a lot of shit to suffer through before Gallows hijacked the show, and, no, we’re not talking 3OH!3, who were the day’s unofficial whipping boys. Charting right up there on the stink meter was Escape the Fate, not so much for being the first of about 20 bands on the day to play metal-tinted screamo, but more for the fact that one of their guitarists seemed to think he was Gene Fucking Simmons. Dude, the next time you rip into a solo, please keep your wagging tongue in your head.

Escape the Fate could have benefitted from a field trip to the nearby Skull Candy Stage (one of five secondary stages on the stadium’s concourse) where Kansas City’s the Architects not only channelled the spirit of the MC5, Stooges, and KISS, but did it without making you want to fire up a flamethrower. Right before he announced that all his songs are either about drugs or law enforcement, singer Brandon Phillips spat “We’re the only rock and roll band on this whole fucking tour.” He might have had a point.

Down on the Main Stage, set up on the stadium’s football field, Florida’s We the Kings came across as perfectly nice guys. But seriously, does the world need another sensitive man’s emo act? Back on the concourse’s Hurley.com Stage, P.O.S. proved a welcome diversion from a day that was mostly all about guitars. Backed by DJ Plain Ole Bill, who kicked it totally old-school on the turntables, the Minneapolis MC delivered something that, funnily enough, was in short supply on the day: genuine, old-fashioned rage. By the time he was done, P.O.S. had taken aim at everything from the various presidents of America to Wal-Mart. P.O.B., meanwhile, created a sonic backdrop that sounded like a doomsday version of a spaghetti Western.

The early frontrunner for most demented act on the bill went to Brokencyde, who gave you a good idea what Eminem would have ended up sounding like if he’d been force-fed a diet of undiluted screamo. As one half of the “Albucrunky” duo shrieked like a cracked-out leprechaun in a leg-hold trap, the other unleashed lines like “Bitches in the club get your sex on.” NOFX’s Fat Mike was bang-on later when he, no doubt mockingly, described Brokencyde as the second-best act of the day.

Generally speaking, Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin is regarded as one of the most humourless legends in punk rock. Give him credit, then, for starting off a well-received set by coming out and making a show of grooming his hair. Or, more precisely, what’s left of it. For 40 minutes, the senior-citizen contingent of the Warped Tour fan base was transported back to the ’80s, especially when Bad Religion raided the vaults for “Fuck Armageddon”¦ This Is Hell”.

On the concourse’s Smartpunk Stage, There for Tomorrow played sensitive man’s emo. Here’s betting their dreamy bassist gets a lot of poon.

The sax player from Streetlight Manifesto probably doesn’t, which is to be expected when you a) play saxophone in a salsa-infused ska-punk band and b) have the facial expressions of someone who normally makes a living pushing shopping carts. Begrudging respect, though, to the band for having the best on-stage sign of the day, namely Streetlight Manifesto written in felt on a shoebox-sized piece of mangled brown cardboard.

Broadway Calls plays what We the Kings would probably describe as sensitive man’s emo.

Meanwhile, on the Hurley Stage a short distance away, the one-woman cyclone known as Tatiana DeMaria led her three-piece, TAT, through a tuff-chick rawk set that would have given Joan Jett a major boner. You could tell DeMaria was English by both her accent and the fact she yelled things like “All right, Canadia.” You could tell she was rock ’n’ roll by the way she spent parts of “Bloodstain” rubbing her cooter like Sasha Grey in Masturbation Nation 3.

And speaking of legends—Joan Jett, that is—what the fuck was up with the giant Ramones tent? On display for purchase were Ramones shirts, hoodies, posters, bongs, bottle openers, and breast pumps. What made this so offensive was that the Ramones must have got held up at the border, because they never even played. Seriously, sending your merch people across the line to fatten up your bank account is just plain goddamn ignorant. Even though getting turned back at the border is a drag, the Ramones should still be ashamed of themselves.

NOFX, on the other hand, can take a giant bow for managing to somehow offend half of Thunderbird Stadium, not with their snot-punk songs, but with what they said between them. Highlights include mocking fans for their hairdos, concert attire, and ethnicity, not to mention inviting a paraplegic on-stage only to dub him Wheelchair Willy. Most hilarious of all, though, was when NOFX took a break from classics like “Fuck the Kids” to launch into a trumpet-powered number that sounded like the theme music from Match Game. Every 40 seconds or so the music would suddenly stop so the band’s members could crack off jokes like “Why did Hitler commit suicide? Because he saw the gas bill!!”

How does NOFX—who were fucking hilarious—get away with it? Well, for a start singer-bassist Fat Mike is Jewish. And secondly, as he wisely noted, “You can be against racism, but you can’t deny that racism is funny.”

As second-stagers Meg & Dia showed that a band featuring two hot sisters can be every bit as boringly sensitive as, say, We the Kings, the criminally appreciated No Bragging Rights got a four-person (!!) mosh pit going with their muscular brand of metal-chugging hardcore.

A short time later, Sing It Loud singer Pat Brown suggested that anyone who didn’t appreciate his band’s heartfelt emo-pop could suck his big fat white dick. Sir, if you could kindly unzip your pants”¦

Even more off-putting was A Skylit Drive, which offered up generic metal screamo. As bad as this was, it was nowhere near as unforgivable as the fact that when frontman Michael “Jag” Jagmin switched to singing after bellowing his brains out, dude sounded like a lady.

At some point, Alexisonfire, who totally owned the Main Stage, became a serious frontrunner for the best band in Canada. Songs like “Young Cardinals” were impossibly tight, the band’s tireless on-stage energy brilliantly infectious.

Warped ’09’s most life-affirming discovery turned out to be Boston’s Therefore I Am. Halfway through a set that suggested someone has spent a lot of time listening to East Coast hardcore, singer Alex Correia put down the mike and instructed the 100 or so people in front of the stage to gather around him. What followed was the kind of no-bullshit speech that should have made Therefore I Am everyone’s new favourite band. Freely admitting he’s anything but cool, Correia offered that his only hope for the assembled was that they would leave Warped having discovered a band that will change their lives. Here’s betting that, for more than a few, Therefore I Am was that band.

No one’s suggesting that 3OH!3’s synth-strafed crunk pop is going to change the way the Warped kids of today view the world, but they were a hell of a lot more fun than Fat Mike—and, basically everyone else that bashed them on this day—might have led you to believe. Even NOFX guitarist El Hefe was unable to resist busting a move, stepping in to handle bass duties for “I Can’t Do It Alone” and later trotting out for an impromptu breakdance.

None of this impressed Gallows, who, toward the end of a set that was as incendiary as it was completely revelatory, took pains to shit on not only 3OH!3, but also almost everyone else on this year’s Warped Tour. This might have come across as nothing more than sour grapes had Frank Carter and company not given one of the most awe-inspiring performances that this reviewer has ever seen. Gallows delivered the musical equivalent of a fucking pistol-whipping, the most insane moment of an insane set coming when the diminutive singer, now back on-stage, divided the faithful into two halves, set them up on opposite sides of the field, and then instructed them to run full-bore toward the middle, creating the wall of death.

At the end of 45 minutes no one will ever forget, guitarist Stephen Carter stood in front of his amp, his guitar feedbacking like Greg Ginn’s during the glory years. Over the racket, an enraged Frank Carter barked “This noise is still better than 90 percent of the music that you had to listen to today.”

What he was trying to say, of course, is that the Warped Tour needs more bands like Gallows. Which was total bullshit. There’s no way Vancouver could have handled it.