D.R.U.G.S. drummer Adam Sterm calls the traveling summer music festival a right of passage for music enthusiasts.
"Everyone needs to be a part of Warped Tour," he says. "It's part of the initiation process, it's part of growing up. This is the punk rock summer camp."
A crowd of more than 15,000 people battled the heat to rock out to their favorite bands at the Verizon Wireless Music Center for the 17th annual Warped Tour in Noblesville on Thursday.
The Vans-sponsored music festival tours the United States every summer featuring many up and coming as well as veteran bands in the rock music scene.
This year's tour featured popular bands The Devil Wears Prada, Simple Plan and 3Oh!3 (absent from the Noblesville show), alongside niche bands like the reggae Pepper, operatic Foxy Shazam and hardcore Attack Attack!
At the 10th stop on the tour, the heat was intensified by the blacktop on which some of the stages and vendors were set up.
"The temperature was crazy, but after the first hour or two, I kind of quit thinking about the heat," Alyssa Hummel, sophomore nursing major, said. "I was having too much fun watching the bands."
To combat the heat, Warped Tour offered free water bottle refills throughout the day. They also had an inflatable water slide to cool off fans.
If the heat doesn't get to the crowd, then the intense moshing and crowd surfing might. Security is present to help the crowd surfers once they reach the front, but accidents still happen. Sophomore public relations major Ashleigh Morgan experienced that herself.
"I was crowd surfing, got dropped and hit my head on a metal stair," she said. There wasn't any blood, but she did end up getting a concussion.
This year Warped Tour is going to 44 cities across across 29 states and two Canadian provinces.
One of the more up-and-coming bands on tour was D.R.U.G.S., short for Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows. Pieced together last year from disbanded groups, they released an album earlier this year. This is their first time on Warped Tour together as a group.
Six stages were spread throughout the music complex, giving fans plenty of choices to see the bands they wanted to see. Merchandise tents lined the walkways, with vendors using a number of gimmicks to get fans to buy their items. Local bands walked among the crowds, offering free listens to their CDs in hope that they would buy them.
The level of access the fans have to their favorite musicians is unique to Warped Tour. Band members are free to walk among the crowd and watch other bands, allowing eager fans to meet and chat with their idols.
Bethany Watson, press coordinator for Warped Tour and La Porte, Ind. native, has managed the tour for the past five years. She views the bands and fans at Warped Tour as one big community.
"If you don't care about the kids out there, if you're going to be an a--hole, then we don't want you here," she said. "It's all about what you bring to the community."
Unwritten Law, a punk band from Southern California that has been around since the early ‘90s, is back on their fifth Warped Tour. They have been a part of two American Warped Tours, the first Warped in Europe, and the only Warped in Australia. They just released their first studio album in six years, titled "Swan."
"For me as an artist, I can't paint the same mural every time and it has to be dope, no matter what that picture is," lead singer Scott Russo said, commenting on how the music of Unwritten Law has changed over the years.
Another selling point for Warped Tour is the number of bands that play in the same place on the same day. Hummel echoes this thought after going to Warped Tour for the first time.
"I like festivals like this because you get to see so many bands for the same price as a regular concert where you would normally only see a few," she said.
Warped Tour also focuses on sports such as skateboarding and BMX biking and featured a half pipe for fans to skate on during the festival.
Warped Tour will continue to adapt to the ever-changing music scene and give fans one of the most unique music experiences around. Hummel can't wait until the next one.
"I will definitely be going next year," she said. "You can't really put into words the feeling you get when you are watching your favorite band and hundreds of people are singing along to the songs."
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