Various Artists -- 'Vans Warped Tour 2007' [DVD review]

Vans Warped Tour 2007 [DVD]
Image Entertainment (12/2/08)
Unrated
60 minutes

A year too late, this video compilation of live performances and artist interviews from the 2007 Warped Tour has finally hit shelves, and unfortunately does its best to underwhelm fans.

Sure, there's some good stuff on here, most notably killer performances from punk legends Bad Religion and Pennywise, as well as solid showings from Coheed and Cambria, and Killswitch Engage.

But for all that is good, there’s plenty of filler, with weak offerings from Pepper, Sum 41 and The Starting Line juxtaposed against unmemorable cuts from the likes of Chiodos and Fishbone.

The problem is, this collection really offers nothing more than a taste, featuring a single song from a broad mix of a scant collection from what the tour has to offer. Put aside the question of whether bands like Killswitch Engage or Avenged Sevenfold belong on the tour; the single-song offerings keep the running time to an hour at the expense of giving you anything of substance or even a real handle of what this tour was like. The producers could have doubled the running time to either offer more songs from the same acts, or at the very least more songs from more acts. Sure, a single song from 22 instead of 11 bands is still light on substance, but at least it gives us a bigger collection. For best effect, there probably should have been a single song from the lesser-known acts and then, for bands like Bad Religion, give at least three songs.

Then there's the choice of interview and performance footage. Why offer interviews with Paramore, The Almost or Meg & Dia but then no performance footage from those bands? Paramore is a particular quandary given the band's rise over the past year.

As for the nuts and bolts, the video is offered up in 1:33:1 with a nice Surround audio track, and there are a handful of bonus songs and interviews to be had as bonus footage.

So basically, what you have here is a perfectly suitable extended commercial for Warped Tour. And if the aim was to chronicle the tour's 13th anniversary, well ... see above for all the shortcomings. With over a year to compile and put this thing together, fans deserved a lot more, especially when you look at the superior audio sets the tour has put out over the years.