Review by Sonny for Chevelle - Bright as Blasphemy (2025)

My knowledge of these Illinois alternative metallers is solely restricted to their 2021 album "Niratias", an album that I quite enjoyed at the time, even if it was not the sort of fare I normally tuck into. So here we are again and they are back with a new album, their tenth in just over 25 years and I have to say I really enjoyed it. With loads of nu-metally bounce and some wicked melodies, despite some of the lyrical themes, I found this to be a fairly upbeat and uplifting experience. The brothers sound exceedingly tight and well-drilled as befits a band well into their third decade of existence. I must confess I never really look forward to the Gateway features very much as I find an awful lot of them to be a bit bland, but the melodic sensibilities and hook-laden quality of the songwriting on "Bright as Blasphemy", coupled with the guys' evident technical competence and a production job that is almost perfectly suited to the material made this a bit of a minor revelation for me. The first three tracks and especially the two-parter "Cowards", are a great beginning to the album and whilst the rest doesn't quite hit as hard as these, as a whole this sounds as good as anything I have heard from the Gateway over the last few years.