Is Chevelle a band that plays it safe? That is one thing that is easy to deduce when you hear their latest album The North Corridor . The eighth-studio album by the American alt/hard rock band verves into a territory that is still tastefully heavy, but in their consistency, there is a certain sense of being reassured, for Pete Loeffler and co.
When the opening track ‘Door to Door Cannibals’ crackles in, it’s energy is difficult to resist. It has got all the makings of classic Chevelle – from the riffs to the screams and the wah-ed out guitar leads. They pick up the pace with ‘Enemies’, which features even more screaming over some relentless abuse of the snare drum by older brother Sam Loeffler. They are a three-piece band, but Pete clearly has a way with eerie guitar layers on tracks like ‘Joyride (Omen)’. It is good to see the anger just doesn’t go away for Chevelle. From when they wrote hits like ‘The Red’ and ‘Vitamin R (Leading Us Along)’ and ‘Send the Pain Below’, they know just when to seethe and when to retreat to despair.
There is a more steady hard rock strain that Chevelle add their classic twisted darkness to with a lot more scream on the side on ‘Rivers’, as Pete sings, “Well it seems as though you want to live forever/Well it takes much more than toes to swim across.” There is a devilish amount of menace, a la prog influencers Tool, to kick off ‘Last Days’, but that’s the beauty of Chevelle – they can take those brooding bare bass lines into an heavy space without any abruptness.
It is still fair to say Chevelle play it safe on The North Corridor , with a lot of repeated elements like the buzzed out guitar leads that repeat on ‘Young Wicked’, but what saves that is the addition of a cheerleader squad chorus. An odd choice, but nonetheless enough to catch your attention. You may not find yourself skipping songs like the well-crafted, ticks-all-the-boxes moody number ‘Punchline’, but The North Corridor will take a while to grow on you. At first listen, it might be the same old Chevelle, relying on a formula, but on repeated listens, you realise it is their very own formula, one that is instantly recognisable.
