Review by Xephyr for Chevelle - Wonder What's Next (2002)

Knowing What's To Come

I never had an AUX connection in my car during high school and there was only one shoddy Hard Rock radio station of extremely questionable quality amidst the plethora of Classic Rock and Country stations, so I was forced to amass a small collection of CD's that I would keep on rotation. Most of them consisted of my most important fledgling Metal albums, ranging from Opeth to Nightwish, but somewhere along the way Wonder What's Next made it into my glove compartment. I honestly don't remember how I even knew about Chevelle at that point, considering this was well past the initial Alternative Metal boom of early Tool and Deftones, among others. Hell, at that point I didn't even know who Deftones were, so Chevelle were my replacement as I spun this CD dozens of times while slowly moving onto their other releases like Vena Sera and La Gargola before mostly forgetting about them at the release of The North Corridor. I was welcomingly reminded of them in 2021 though with the release of Niratias, which showed the band moving in a refreshing direction by flexing their 1990's Tool influence to pretty fantastic results. Now that modern Chevelle is showing some promise, it made me wonder how it would stack up against their most consistent and successful output that's probably still lying in my car somewhere.

Comparison to Chevelle's late 1990's and early 2000's contemporaries is almost unavoidable since it's very blatant, but I believe reduction of their music to a simple derivative is a bit harsh, all things considered. Now that I'm more acquainted with Deftones, I think that Wonder What's Next emulates something like Around The Fur rather than Ænima or even Undertow, especially with Niratias showing how different their style has become, with “Grab Thy Hand” being the only real exception. They still occupy a strange middle ground though, being much less progressive or weird than Tool or System of a Down but not as raw or intimate as Deftones. I don't think that's a damning position though, since there's room in that middle ground for something more accessible, uncompromisingly catchy, but still heavy enough to capture the Metal crowd. Wonder What's Next is the epitome of simple but effective radio-ready songwriting in the earlier Alternative Metal space, for better or worse, and most of it still holds up pretty well.

The overall catchiness of Wonder What’s Next can’t be understated, despite the album not having a ton of variety between songs. Most tracks ranging from “Comfortable Liar” to “The Red” are downtempo and based around hard-hitting but slightly muddy sounding riffs that eventually crescendo into memorable choruses. Although their approach is straightforward, their execution is top notch, as almost every song has a signature hook that manages to get lodged in the listener’s head. The satisfying chug riffs of “Closure” and “Forfeit” are great foundations for Pete Loeffler’s convincing and emotional vocal delivery, which is the main reason why Chevelle’s style is so solid. While some of their lyrics can be a little clumsy at times, Loeffler’s ability to add melody and spice to the more spoken-word Alt-Metal style as well as hit the more aggressive choruses with confidence on tracks like “Send the Pain Below” is impressive. Those choruses and the variety within them are the backbone of standout tracks like “Closure”, “Forfeit”, and “The Red”, but are also the downfall of the weaker tracks like “Wonder What’s Next” and “Don’t Fake This”.

The consistency of Wonder What’s Next ultimately leads to my middling opinions on it though, as while there are plenty of great moments and choruses throughout the album, there isn’t too much else to it. The 4-minute, chorus driven songs definitely have an addictive quality to them as I thoroughly enjoyed going back to this album, but they cornered themselves a bit too much in the end. The individual songs are great, but I feel like the album itself starts to buckle under its own monotony by “Don’t Fake This” or “Forfeit”, despite “Forfeit” being one of my favorite Chevelle songs. The emotion that went into this album can definitely be felt and it’s one of the main reasons why Wonder What’s Next holds up today, but the ending ballad is just a bit too much. It doesn’t do anything particularly interesting and the vocal harmonies really don’t work for me, ending the album on a pretty terrible note.

It’s apparent to me that I prefer Chevelle’s more recent direction, but their original contributions to the Alternative Metal scene shouldn’t be completely sidelined despite not being profound classics. Alternative Metal is a weirdly inconsistent genre with what it can try to accomplish sometimes and, to Chevelle’s credit, they found a formula that is not only approachable but memorable in all the right ways. Although they only found serious success off of “Send The Pain Below” and “The Red”, “Comfortable Liar” and “An Evening With El Diablo” with its satisfying bassline are deeper cuts that show that slightly more generic Alternative Metal can still be extremely good when performed well.