Famed for country music Nashville, Tennessee might not be your first thought when thinking of quality metalcore. Well think again because Chamber have come to blow your preconceptions away with their incendiary debut album Cost Of Sacrifice.
Cost Of Sacrifice is a clean slate in many ways. The band’s last EP, Ripping / Pulling / Tearing found new singer Jacob Lilly rerecording the vocals on a release that was already complete. Working with a blank canvas he’s firmly put his mark on proceedings as Chamber, now operating as a quartet, move with a more technical prowess and that’s most evident on opening salvo “Fracture”. Something of a musical maze “Fracture” is a kaleidoscopic cornucopia of neat time changes as their sound explodes in all directions and while their epilepsy inducing sound often teeters on the edge of insanity Chamber remain confidently in control.
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A series of electric shocks herald the arrival of “Scars In Complex Patterns” and finds the band scrawling their sound on every available surface like Iowa-era Slipknot meeting Napalm Death. However, Chamber have hit a unique groove and, quite rightly, they’ve picked up the ball and ran with it. A pleasantly hard band to categorise and you can hear a ‘90s influence in bands like Deftones and Glassjaw but then Chamber with throw in some industrial flavourings to put you in a loop and the result is a sound that’s at once familiar and forward facing. Ferocious blast beats permeate “Paranoia Bleeds” before the two minute “Visions O Hostility” is powered forth by undiluted hardcore rage.
What makes Chamber stand out from their peers is their lyrical honesty. With hearts exposed and wounds picked open Chamber have a deep lyricism that matches their musical brutality. The vaguely ethereal “Impulse” buries Jacob’s growls deep in the mix and becomes all the more haunting for it and, by contrast, makes the following “In Cleansing Fire” even more scorching. Arriving live a Panzer division “Numb (Transfuse)” is simply sick and the ambient outro ensures “The Edge Of Every Lie” explodes like a cluster bomb. The lumbering, industrial tinged “Disassemble Reassemble” is truly unsettling and sets the stage nicely for the eponymous closer. Pulling all the strands together in a cohesive whole “Cost Of Sacrifice” is a raucous closer that leaves the listener hungry for more.
Debut albums rarely come as fully formed as Cost Of Sacrifice and Chamber have birthed a game changer.
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Cost of Sacrifice is out on October 23rd
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