In a new interview with Nic and Big J of the Boise, Idaho radio station 100.3 The X Rocks, CHEVELLE drummer Sam Loeffler spoke about the band’s recently released new single “Rabbit Hole (Cowards, Pt. 1)”. The track is taken from CHEVELLE‘s as-yet-unannounced tenth studio album, which will arrive later in the year. The follow-up to 2021’s “Niratias” will mark CHEVELLE‘s first release through Alchemy Recordings following a long run with the Epic label. Alchemy Recordings is a record label created in partnership between Dino Paredes, former American Recordings vice president of A&R, and Danny Wimmer, the founder of Danny Wimmer Presents, the premier production company for rock music festivals in the United States.
Asked how he and his brother, CHEVELLE vocalist/guitarist Pete Loeffler, manage to retain the band’s signature sound with each new piece of music they put out, Sam said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “You really hope that your music sounds like you, because it’s not always the case, for sure… But, yeah, definitely the way Pete plays is particular to him, the way that he writes. It’s funny because I can hear it too, and then I wonder if I’m so close to it, am I the only one that’s hearing it?
“Man, these songs take so bloody long now to write because the first versions of ’em are just — you’ve gotta keep going and keep going, getting it better, and then you’re, like, ‘All right, I’m really happy with this,'” he explained. “And then [Pete] looks at it and goes, ‘Can I write a better chorus? Because I think the verse is better than the chorus.’ And then he writes a better chorus, and now the verse isn’t good enough. Okay, now those things seem to work really well, but now we’ve gotta write a bridge, which is sort of a song within a song in a lot of places. So how do you write a bridge that…? It’s such a process. It takes so bloody long now, and every single word is scrutinized over. Literally, when we’re working on the music, Pete‘s working on the music and he’s, ‘How do I suck every moment of joy out of this process so that it can be as good as it can be?’ And then at the end of it, he’s, like, ‘This is joyless, and it’s perfect.'”
Sam went on to clarify that “the fun part about it is the writing. The hard part is the producing and just going back and doing it again,” he said.
Referencing the fact that he and Pete decided to produce the band’s new LP themselves after working with Joe Barresi for almost a decade and a half, Sam said: “We self-produced this stuff — well, Pete really did. I think knowing that, it’s really hard to not have a producer because you need somebody to take it away from you and say, ‘No, this is done. Stop spending time on it.’ But this is where we’re growing. Do things harder and harder.”
He added: “I mean, I make it sound brutal, and it is kind of brutal. The writing process and finishing a song is like pulling your hair out and then trying to put the hair back in.”
This summer CHEVELLE will embark on a massive tour with special guests ASKING ALEXANDRIA and DEAD POET SOCIETY. Produced by Live Nation, the 38-city trek kicks off on August 7 at Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas, making stops across North America in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and more before wrapping up in Airway Heights, Washington at BECU Live at Northern Quest on October 2.
Last July, Sam told TribLive.com about CHEVELLE‘s next LP: “We kind of did expect to have it done [already]. It’s like pulling teeth. This is what I described: Writing an album and doing all that is like pulling your hair out and then trying to put it back in. Writers love having written, is what I learned. It’s just torturous on my brother. It’s torturous because there’s just so many factors to making something great. And then the longer you can live with it, the more changes you’re gonna make. So that makes you never want to put it out. You never want to pull the pin and throw the grenade because you’re like, well, it gets better every time I look at it.”
As for what the 10-song album sounds like, Sam said: We’re always skewing towards heavy. [But] these [last] two songs that we’ve been working on right now are definitely different from everything we did, although ‘Niratias’, our last album, I think was a really important snapshot of what we’ve been learning about writing and about music and stuff. This one definitely sounds different than just rock music, definitely different.”
Released in March 2021 via Epic Records, “Niratias” was recorded throughout 2019 and 2020 with Barresi. The album artwork was designed by Boris Vallejo — the famed and award-winning artist is responsible for the posters used for films like “Knightriders” and “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, as well as iconic ’70s and ’80s science fiction novel covers and magazines (such as Heavy Metal).
Over the course of its career, the Chicago rockers have generated nearly half a billion streams, notched seven No. 1 hits, and sold out shows worldwide. Their catalog spans the double-platinum “Wonder What’s Next”, which boasts the double-platinum smash “The Red” and the platinum hit “Send The Pain Below”. “This Type Of Thinking (Could Do Us In)” attained platinum status, while “Vena Sera” was certified gold. CHEVELLE has landed four Top 10 debuts on the Billboard 200, including “Sci-Fi Crimes” (2009),“Hats Off To The Bull” (2011),“La Gárgola” (2014) and “The North Corridor” (2016). The latter two each captured the No. 1 slot on the Top Rock Albums chart.
Source: blabbermouth.net
