CHEVELLE — Niratias (review)

CHEVELLE — Niratias album cover Album · 2021 · Alternative Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
ssmarcus
Alt-metal veterans Chevelle are back with their fifth studio album... to debut in the top 10? Huh? When did they drop all these mega successful albums? Where the hell have I been? Surely most of those must have been released in the early to mid 'oughts - right? Well... no. Apparently this is already the third top 10 since 2014!

While I fondly remember growing up listening to Chevelle's 2002 debut Wonder What's Next, much of its charm faded fast as I grew to appreciate more technically sophisticated metal and progressive music. Too heavy to be remain commercially relevant but too simplistic for proper metal fans, I hardly would have expected Chevelle to survive rock's fall from commercial dominance in the almost two decades since their debut. And yet here they are, nine albums in and more successful than just about any of their alt-metal and post-grunge peers could ever have hoped to be. How did Chevelle do it?!

I am not familiar enough with band's back catalogue or business history to fully answer this question. But Chevelle's latest release, NIRATIAS, which demonstrates the band's commitment to growth as musicians and songwriters, firmly solidifies, in my book, Chevelle's place amongst modern hard rock's elite "survivors," approaching the inner circle of artists like The Foo Fighters, Deftones, and Tool.

As the album's cover art and psyched-out title suggest, NIRATIAS, an acronym for Nothing Is Real And This Is A Simulation, is an album with near progressive ambition. On tracks like "Mars Simula" and "Self Destructor," big and melodic riffs are accompanied by playfully soaring vocals. The riffing and bass on "Peach" and "Ghost and Razor" are unmistakably but tastefully Tool inspired. So epic and triumphant was the track "Remember When," I was praying the band would, by the end, segue into a reprisal of the "Send the Pain Below" chorus.

The record's weakness lies with the various pyschedelic interludes and piano-based spoken word closing track. While the verdict is still out on the artistic merit of these passages, they do not substantially detracts from the overall experience of listening to this record.

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