What The Hell Is Going On With The Contamination Tour Route?
Wrong One To Drive With
An absolutely killer tour was announced this week as Dying Fetus will hit the road this September and October with Incantation, Gatecreeper, and Genocide Pact. This package is Revolver’s Contamination Tour, which seems a little odd considering Revolver tends to focus on more “mainstream” hard rock and metal acts. They also put out those dumb “Hottest Chicks In Metal” magazines that need to either go away forever or have a companion issue with sexy pictures of Corpsegrinder and Dino Cazares. Fair is fair.
This is a wall-to-wall brutal show going from coast to coast both in the US and Canada. It’s always nice to see metal veterans taking out young up-and-coming bands on tour with them. There’s one thing about the tour that caught my eye, though. Take a look and see if you notice anything.
Is this one of the weirdest touring routes you’ve ever seen? I’ve been looking at this poster for way too long trying to make sense of it. The tour starts in Flint, Michigan. None of the bands are from Flint. None of the bands are even from the region. Dying Fetus is from Maryland, Incantation is from New York, Gatecreeper is from Arizona, and Genocide Pact is from Washington, DC. Hopefully it helps Flint out in some small way since the water is still completely fucked and they could use all the help they can get. (You can help out too). From there, the tour heads east before heading back to Michigan for some reason and then west. Here’s where things get interesting.
The tour hits Salt Lake City Utah on September 26th. Two days later they’re in Calgary, AB, Canada. That’s a 14+ hour drive. Thankfully they’re not playing there the next night, but that is still a massive distance to cross. There wasn’t somewhere in Wyoming or Montana to stop off at on the way up? I know it’s not exactly heavy with population, but still.
After that the tour heads to the West Coast before looping down south. All fine and dandy. That is, until it hits Winter Park, Florida. Again, odd choice. Maybe they just want to catch a few taping of NXT before playing a show? From there, skip over places like Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia and head to North Carolina. Here’s where things get interesting and by interesting, I mean “aneurysm-inducing”.
This big two-nation tour goes from Greensboro, North Carolina to New York City. That’s over 500 miles in a hot, gross van with your hot, gross band mates already a month into the tour. Maybe that’s the only date they could get to play in NYC and booked everything around it? That’s a long way to go and a lot of places to skip. The next day they head to Hartford, CT and then, in a move that may have very well been an accident, the tour turns around goes to Millvale (Pittsburgh), PA for the Brewtal Beer Fest. That’s another 500 mile drive to play with a few more bands at a 21+show. That beer better be real good. After that they head back east and south for dates in Baltimore and Virginia before heading back north to Philadelphia, Boston, Quebec and Ontario Canada.
For those of you not familiar with the US or you’re just not very good at geography, take a look at this helpful routing map done-up by fellow writer Stockhausen. Visual aides are so helpful.
This route looks like a secret message, but the only message I’m seeing “We desperately need gas money and van repairs now.” Well, that and “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” These long, meandering stretches are hard on the vehicles, the bodies, and the mind. It’s a lot of miles, many that will most likely be done overnight.
Why? Just…why? I’m really asking. If there’s a good reason, then cool, I’ve love to hear it. I’m no tour manager and maybe there’s a method behind the madness, but I’m not seeing it. There’s not a lot of gaps in the dates, so that means going from city to city pretty quickly. I don’t think there’s too many random festival dates being hit along the way, necessitating the weird routing. Mapquest literally ran out of slots for locations when I tried to get a visual of the entire tour.
The tour is going to be great. I highly encourage you to check it out if it comes to your area and not 400 miles out of the way. Maybe all will be revealed and the stress migraine I’m starting to get looking at the poster will dissipate. Until then, your guess as to why tours are mapped out like this is as good as mine.
