Young up-and-comers on the Chicago hard-rock scene, Chevelle is much more engaging than its fellow Chi-Town compatriots like Disturbed and can credit its success to its noteworthy influences and melodic aptitude. Three brothers out of a total of seven Loeffler siblings, Chevelle (Pete-vocals and guitar, Joe-bass and vocal and Sam-drums) paid its dues in Chicago clubs like the Lounge Axe, Fireside Bowl and legendary Double Door before recently finding mainstream success on the strength of its single “The Red.”
The band was able to take its gearhead mentality that gave birth to the name Chevelle and an appreciation of metal’s elders and form it into a blend of easy to swallow heaviness influenced by the likes of Tool and the much under-appreciated Helmet.
Chevelle’s latest disc Wonder What’s Next starts with an ethereal vocal hum and spattering of distant guitar notes that provides one of the only quiet portions of the album. The silence does not last long as lead track “Family System” flows into an all-out assault of thick cut distortion and pulse-pounding beats that dominates a majority of the 11-song album.
Four taps of the hi-hat introduce “Send the Pain Below,” a track which finds traces of Helmet’s Page Hamilton all over the place. The track utilizes the kind of toe-tapping guitar blueprint that made the aforementioned seminal group a success. Vocalist Pete Loeffler comes across as a young Maynard James Keenan (Tool) and offers whisper vocals that sound drawn out and fluctuating in their approach, something that has made Keenan a recognizable frontman in his time at the helm of Tool and the equally impressive A Perfect Circle.
“Closure” draws influence from “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” from the Deftones’ last great release, 1997’s Around The Fur, a mix of quiet harmonies packed into speaker-damaging tunes that attached an amazing amount of amplification onto a simple CD. Singing, “You will never belong to me / Like a leach / I hold on as if we belonged,” Pete laments on lost love and the feelings he can’t control.
Of course, it was Wonder What’s Next lead single “The Red” that took the band out of that color set and propelled it into the green with big success on hard-rock radio and an equally aggressive video to shake up the daily dosage of pop garbage on MTV.
The song, shifting and fluctuating in tight quarters like Tool’s best hits, opens into an open sea of a chorus with Pete singing “So lay down the threat is real / When his sight goes red again.” Simple and in-your-face, the track reaches a climax with Pete’s repeated screams of “seeing red again!” against the initial framework of the song.
Influences abound; it is perhaps “Don’t Fake This” that makes its mark as one of the most original-sounding tracks on Wonder What’s Next. The sound of the track will perhaps serve as a launching pad for the tone of future Chevelle releases.
Opening with a clean guitar riff that opens into an explosive distorted version of itself, the noise fades to leave a rolling bass line that structures the verses of the song. The intro, verses and choruses showcase solid songwriting and the opportunity for growth, but like several of Chevelle’s tracks, the breakdowns on “Don’t Fake This” rely on stale guitar riffs and screams to fill in the blanks and bolster its emerging sound.
Despite this shortcoming, it is important to remember that Chevelle is a young band with all of the tools to make itself a legitimate player on the metal and Billboard charts.
Not having anything to fake, Chevelle has the workings of a solid band, and given the proper amount of breathing room and a diversity of influences, there is a good chance it will stick around in the consciousness of the record-buying public for some time.
