It’s an incredible time to be a fan of heavy music, especially if you’re living in Nashville. While hometown heroes Orthodox have captured national attention with a record that quickly shifted from local favourite to country-wide cult classic, the city’s underground is more electric than ever. Up-and-comers like Yautja, Lethal Method, and Dogpile continue to fuel the beautiful chaos festering within the scene. Yet, one band has been steadily orchestrating a “takeover”, rising from the grit of cheap hotel conference rooms and after-hours bowling alleys to land a powerhouse deal with Pure Noise Records. That band is, obviously... (pause for dramatic effect)... Chamber.
Chamber's intentions became clear the moment they enlisted producer Randy LeBoeuf—Will Putney’s protégé and a highly sought-after producer for your typical mid-tier festival band (not an insult, by the way). LeBoeuf is capable of helping the band design a sound that scales up for prestigious tour packages while keeping the local credibility that has kept them a fixture in Nashville's grittiest venues. This was apparent on their debut Cost Of Sacrifice in 2020 and its follow-up A Love To Kill For in 2023. While it continues to be the case on This Is Goodbye…, it now feels like the sound of a band and a producer who have stopped "learning" each other and have started operating as a single, cohesive unit. It’s hard to imagine Chamber sounding like Chamber without LeBoeuf behind the glass.
Not only do we get a mix that bludgeons one's skull and mangles the brain matter thereafter, LeBeouf appears to have allowed a little gap for the repulsive muck of the live recording session to leak out and accumulate, like dead insects and solid food waste choking a drainage pipe. While this filth is present everywhere, it’s most effective when the band abandons their signature jagged time signatures and piercing pinch harmonics for a crushing breakdown. These moments of "meat and potatoes" gnarliness provide a necessary change of pace—grounding the technical chaos in pure, primitive bursts of "f– around and find out" energy. Take “Scarlet Link" and the record’s teaser "Violins", both of which feel like the sonic equivalent of Car Bomb covering the entirety of It’s All a Long Goodbye (2005) by On Broken Wings.
That is the extent of my admiration for this record though. The more I sit through the rest of This Is Goodbye…, the more I find the parts where the band intends for it to be unpredictable and flashy to come off as overtly unnecessary and, ironically, predictable. Take "Pale Blue (Why)", for example which divebombs into an ethereal, melodic breakdown—an expanse that feels like aimlessly wading through an ocean of neon-colored circuit boards—that would make any Static Dress devotee swoon before suddenly pivoting into a frantic display of jazz prowess. It’s the kind of move that would be impressive if I hadn’t already sat through six different variations of that same formula in the last seven songs. When the "chaos" begins to follow a plan subconsciously, it ceases to be a shock to the system and begins to feel like a checklist—or worse, a cliché that might be used as a template for a "How to Mathcore/Mosh Metal in 30 Seconds" YouTube Short.
As of this review, the band is about to embark on a North American spring tour alongside the latest heralds of UK hardcore, Guilt Trip and Malevolence. While the pairing felt slightly jarring at first, it makes perfect sense once you assemble the pieces of the modern metalcore puzzle. Both UK acts cut their teeth in the underground, playing dive bars for whatever dingy promoters would have them, before pivoting their sound toward a crowd that prefers high-production, sanitised alt-metalcore—or even (god forbid) "djentcore". The kind of sound tailored for those whose knowledge of the genre begins and ends with metal TikTok reaction channels. I’m not suggesting they’ve entirely abandoned their roots, but the cross-eyed elitists (the ones who only "crowdkill" teenage girls on the outskirts of the pit) would certainly lose their shit if I mentioned "hardcore" in the same breath as those two bands today. I’d wager those same elitists will eventually come for Chamber, too.