The annual Battle to the Warped Tour wraps up its month-long competition on Saturday, with five bands emerging from the 35 that competed for a slot on this year's Warped Tour.
Now in its sixth year, the event is one of a kind. "Ours is the only non-corporate battle of the bands," said organizer Chris Cardenas, who successfully lobbied the Vans-sponsored tour for the Anchorage competition. "Ernie Ball does one over the Internet, but this is the only independent one allowed by Warped."
Saturday's winner will join the tour in August for three shows -- Boise, Idaho; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle -- on a bill featuring big-name headliners like 3OH!3, Gym Class Heroes, A Day to Remember, Against Me!, Attack Attack!, August Burns Red, Asking Alexandria and The Devil Wears Prada.
Seven semi-finalists were selected from six preliminary battles that began April 13. Last week that number was whittled down to the remaining five: PJ Franco and the Burnouts, To the Depths, Saturday Sleeper, Spitshine and The Rebuttals. The judges made their choices based on originality, performance and crowd participation, and those same criteria will be applied to select the grand prize winner.
For an added twist, the finals will feature a panel of guest judges that includes Social Distortion, Pennywise and Good Charlotte manager Carlos Donahue, Warped Tour marketing director Sarah Maer and Page Hamilton, longtime frontman of the iconic hard rock group Helmet.
The icing on the cake: Hamilton will join last year's Battle to the Warped Tour winner Kallahan on stage for a handful of Helmet songs. (The band's upcoming record was also produced by Hamilton.)
That's another feature unique to the Battle to the Warped Tour -- the prizes are more tangible. Cardenas said that gives bands a better reason to get involved, which led to the variety of bands that participated this year.
"The cool thing is the music has gotten more diverse. It used to be metal bands and a couple punks bands," he said. "That's what I like to see, and that's one of the points of the fest."
By Matt Sullivan
msullivan@adn.com