ALBUM REVIEW: A Love To Kill For – Chamber
It happens all the time; a metalcore band comes out with a killer debut only to go in a – shudder – ‘more accessible’ direction for album number two. Maybe their vocalist gets some singing lessons, or they start doing the whole shoegaze thing, or they just stuff their music with layer upon layer of inevitable backing track fodder; sometimes it works, sometimes it really doesn’t, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Look at KNOCKED LOOSE, for example, arguably going harder and heavier on every release and yet pretty much the biggest hardcore band in the world at this point. Nashville outfit CHAMBER seem intent on a similar path, deciding after the release of their 2020 debut full-length Cost Of Sacrifice that no-one needs them to be “the pretty band” and instead pursuing even more savagery on their sophomore LP A Love To Kill For.
Having fired some warning shots with last year’s surprise Carved In Stone EP, A Love To Kill For sees the band launch a full scale bombardment across 14 tracks and 29 minutes. As promised, this is the ugly kind of metalcore, that kind of grab you by the throat and drag you through the mud style that skips any of the big melodic choruses that can get some of these bands a bit of radio time and instead doubles down on low, bruising riffs, chaotic mathy freak-outs, and – of course – some truly bone-juddering breakdowns. Randy LeBoeuf is behind the desk once again, and his increasingly recognisable mark as heard in stellar recent efforts from the likes of JESUS PIECE and THE ACACIA STRAIN is keenly felt here as he grants the band a tight and punchy sound with just enough roughness around the edges.
They don’t hang about either; the album’s opener launches straight in all frenetic and violent before proceeding to crush and bludgeon its way through a merciless 70 seconds as vocalist Jacob Lily gets right up in the listener’s face with a versatile array of screams and gutturals. It feels apt that this track is named after the band themselves; it demonstrates much of what CHAMBER do best, but it also doesn’t give the game away entirely. Retribution follows immediately after and begins to push at a more expansive edge that appears sporadically throughout the record, while later the bleak and devastating breakdown of To Die In The Grip Of Poison and the vicious vocal trade-offs of One Final Sacrifice help form a couple of back-to-back highlights that show just how consistently the band can knock the wind out of their listeners.
While dwelling too much on individual tracks does risk doing those left out a disservice, it feels particularly apt to touch on another pairing of We Followed You To The Bitter End and Our Beauty Decayed, Nothing Was Left. Clocking in at 13 and 25 seconds respectively, they form something of a diptych right at the heart of the record, the anxious mathcore of the former running straight into the filthy groove of the latter in a way that feels a bit more creative than the standard conveyor belt of ragers approach CHAMBER could so easily have gone for here. The title track also deviates a little, this one not so much a case of more room to breathe as more room to suffocate as the band make full use of its four-minute runtime to take the album’s menacing atmosphere to its furthest extreme.
As tempting as it may be to whip out the crystal ball and start pondering at whether that penultimate track is a hint at things to come, the fact is that CHAMBER really don’t need to worry too much about evolution when they’ve got such a winning formula on their hands already. This is metalcore of the meanest order, not entirely without precedent or comparison, but delivered with enough of its own flair to ensure that the band stand out even among the very strongest of the pack. Provided you’re happy to skip the pretty bollocks and head straight for the violence, A Love To Kill For should be right up there with the best the genre has had and will have to offer in 2023.
Rating: 8/10
A Love To Kill For is set for release on July 14th via Pure Noise Records.
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