Bring On The Chaos: Taking Back Sunday

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Taking Back Sunday are tired. Not in a rude, don’t want to do an interview way. But just in an exhausted too tired to talk kind of a way. And it’s no surprise they’ve been working flat out. “Had Taste Of Chaos started next week I’d probably kill myself,” says Matt Rubano, Taking Back Sunday’s bassist. “We’re extremely burnt out right now but in a good way. Like we’ve been doing so much lately, by lately I mean the last six months, and the last two years.”

The band started the year touring the UK, they played Give It A Name in April, released their third album, toured Australia and continued to tour Europe, played two intimate shows before the Kerrang! Awards last week, played Leeds and Reading going to Paris for Rock En Seine in-between. Next week they play MTV’s Video Music Awards, an AIDS benefit the night before, and two shows in north east America with My Chemical Romance after. Then they’ll finally get a few weeks off before heading to New Zealand on October 4th for Taste Of Chaos where they’ll be headlining the seven-week tour which will take them all over the world, reaching the UK in November, along with Alexisonfire, Underoath, Anti-Flag, Senses Fail and Saosin.

“We keep a real breakneck pace,’ says Rubano. ‘I think it seems to people that in-between records and tours bands are just relaxing and at home but they’re not. Every band I know has had maybe a month off in-between what people perceive as the end of a record and the beginning of the recording of the next record, and then you start touring right away but I mean it’s the life, it’s a great life.” 

TBS formed in 1999 with singer Antonio Longo and drummer Stevie D, but it took a drastic line-up change (the band became: Lazarra, Reyes, O’Connell, bassist Shaun Cooper and guitarist John Nolan) before they were signed to Victory in 2002. Their debut album Tell All Your Friends was a huge success with its biting lyrics and hardcore tendencies and the band gained a reputation for frenetic live shows. They toured relentlessly during 2002 and 2003, this put a strain on the band and forced Cooper and Nolan to leave the band in the middle of a tour.  Old friends of the band Fred Mascherino and Matt Rubano were drafted in and this line-up went on to record and release Where You Want To Be in 2004. Endless touring again followed and the band earnt an amazingly dedicated fan base and a deal with Warner Records which brings us to now, their third album Louder Now, relentless touring once more and Taste Of Chaos in the autumn.

“I’m looking forward to Taste Of Chaos,” says Rubano. “Especially because it’ll give us a chance to go to some countries we haven’t been to yet. There’s some Italy dates and Switzerland, Austria, mostly mainland Europe shows and New Zealand, we’ve not played New Zealand yet but Australia will be a return visit and obviously the UK. Japan we’ll be playing in Nagoya in addition to Osaka and Tokyo which we’ve already played. So some exciting new stuff, some second time and some - like the UK - will just sort of be like homecoming.”