Chameleon

About

Since first bonding over Slowdive at a Texas karaoke bar six years ago, musicians Uriel Avila and Jonathan Perez have grown trauma ray into Fort Worth’s foremost flag bearer of crushing shoegaze. A five-piece rounded out by bassist Darren Baun, drummer Nicholas Bobota, and guitarist Coleman Pruitt, the band’s debut album, 'Chameleon,' captures their evolving sound at an apex of majestic devastation. A fusion of downer hook, gauzy melancholia, and bulldozer riff, the album heaves and crashes across 50 minutes of stacked amplifier alchemy. Lyrically the songs trace similarly lofty and brooding terrain; Avila says "The theme is death. And a chameleon, like death, can shape-shift in and out our lives in different form." Chameleon opens with "Ember," dreamy and distant, alternately anthemic and apocalyptic, defeated and deafening. Lead single "Bishop" perfectly encapsulates trauma ray’s depth and dimension, ripping out of the gate with “the biggest, baddest, saddest wall of sound.” Lyrics about being burnt at the stake and "tossed in the flame" float above a stop-start assault of precision distortion, eventually expanding into a lush, heavy, sorrowful end coda. "Spectre" is a mysteriou, introspective dirge, envisioned as a "mellow, slowcore, Duster-thing," all feeling and heavy fuzz chords (with no lead guitar). Avila wrote it, "to be a hymnal" from the perspective of someone who won't let go - a ghost, an ex, a shadow self. Although the album is rich with subtletie, graceful lull, and "breaths of air," the band’s three guitar attack is its defining force, a power flexed to its peak on "Bardo." Perez’s intentions were blunt: "I wanted to write a riff that was hard as fuck." The result is alternately mean and eerie, veering between noisy one string bends and surging headbang, mapping a middle ground between Unwound and early-Deftone. One of trauma ray’s greatest gifts is their ability to make doomy, sledgehammer heaviness sound like an earworm, without production tricks or gimmicks: "Riff, verse, choru, three guitar parts – that’s all you need." This quality is particularly apparent on the title track, a churning slab of amplifier worship, swirling chord, and heavenly, defeated vocals about not belonging, shape-shifting, and death ("A twisted face / Void of attention / An empty space / In your reflection"). .

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →