I initially wanted to write about Chevelle's fourth album Vena Sera, which came out a couple years ago. I've been burning a hole through my copy of this album at work as I trudge through my final episode of scene staging on an animated TV show. It's the meat and potatoes meal, for sure. Sometimes that gourmet rock and roll just isn't what the body needs. Chevelle are radio friendly, not doing anything that's going to blow the doors off of Creative University, but they sure do their thing damn well, and the music, to me, is like kettle korn with crack-cocaine sugar. Can't stop, can't stop listening. An addiction that will run its course, I'm sure, as Chevelle's brand of muscle-intelli-rock doesn't usually do it for me anymore.
However, Vena Sera is definitely the best album they've made, in my opinion. Way better than the piece of shit that is their new album (pictured at left). I listened to most of it on YouTube and, well, it's SO PEDESTRIAN it's not even worth talking about. What a fucking disappointment. When Chevelle disappoint me, it's a bad sign. You know what you're going to get with them, yet they have hit an all time low. Even the album art is the worst they've come up with yet. Vena Sera at least had a few curves, production wise, a few alternative styles of voice and guitar sound to mix up the procedings, but mostly it was the arrangements and the way the dude pulls off his vocal melodies amidst his power chord worship. It was very tight. It has a momentum that is admirable.
This new piece of garbage is flirting with a level of Nickleback complexity we've yet to see from the brothers Chevelle. My brother Devin can't argue this one. It's pretty average, and thus, not worth my time. Plus, can we please get these guys an album cover that has even a remote chance of meaning something? Sci-Fi Crimes has some pretty obvious (read "shitty") artwork. No, I don't care to look inside the liner notes to see what's on the other side of that spaceship. How long did it take someone to Photoshop this thing? An hour? It's not like this is the first album cover of theirs to frustrate man's search for meaning. While this one was a cool photograph with decent color design, who really cares? Does it reflect the music in any way? NO. And don't tell me that hidden production tweak that sounds like glass breaking on the downbeat in track 6 is the secret. It's not. This is corporate middle-of-the-road album art and says to me that Chevelle really aren't going to attempt anything interesting, ever. With all the music I've been hearing in the past five years, listening to them is like binging on Mac n' Cheese when there's plenty of decent slow cooker recipes worth trying. (Oh, slow cooked Mac n Cheese is da bomb, by the way).
Anyway, Vena Sera is a more than decent listen if you're into this stuff.
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