Chevelle has always been the rock band for people who don’t really want to talk about rock bands. They’re the musical equivalent of a black T-shirt that somehow never fades, no matter how many times it’s been through the dryer of mainstream culture and frat-boy nostalgia.
If you were in high school in the early 2000s and angry about something you couldn’t define but definitely felt (your dad, the SATs, the parking lot at Wendy’s where you caught your Ex cheating on you), there’s a good chance The Red was your unofficial anthem. And now, thirty years later, the Loeffler brothers are still here; smashing through the fluorescent mediocrity of the modern rock landscape with a record called, Bright As Blasphemy.
My initial thoughts, the album title sounds more like a postmodernist essay on 21st-century Christianity written in the footnotes of a Slayer lyric sheet. It’s a title that says, “We’re still the same band that makes vaguely spiritual anxiety sound like a conversation between Tool and Breaking Benjamin at a Chili’s in Aurora,” but now with 100% more existential condemnation for The Matrix.
The thing about Chevelle is that they never really had a “moment” in the traditional sense. No drug scandals. No dramatic breakups. No genre pivots that alienated their fanbase. No reality show side hustles. Just Pete Loeffler writing riff-driven confessionals that read like journal entries from a man who once had a dream about being trapped in a warehouse with his conscience and a distortion pedal. Meanwhile, Sam Loeffler drums like he’s trying to beat back every bad decision he never made.
Formed in the Chicago suburbs in 1995, Chevelle started as a three-piece with brother Joe on bass, until he departed after 2005’s This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In). That’s when the band locked into its now-iconic format: two blood brothers and an in-law carrying the entire weight of modern rock radio on their shoulders, like Atlas with a Blackstar amp. By now, they’ve released nine studio albums, racked up over a dozen No. 1 rock hits (because Billboard charts still exist, apparently), and sold millions of records without anyone ever really realizing how famous they are.
What makes them fascinating to me is that Chevelle is a genre within a genre. I mean, if I’m being honest, they secretly made the sober side of Nu-Metal sexy. Raise your hand if you were the preacher’s daughter who attended an MTV-themed sleepover in 2003 and wound up seeing The Red music video. Raise your other hand if you found a Loeffler brother doppelganger at school the following Monday and stalked him until he agreed to come to your youth group. Now flail both those hands if you got engaged your senior year and are still married. Cool, I hate you.
According to the press release (which sounds like it was written by someone who’s seen Chevelle play exactly once at Rock on the Range in 2012), the album “adds another exciting chapter” to their already intimidating discography. What that means, in practical terms, is that the guys are about to unleash another barrage of tightly wound, emotionally claustrophobic tracks that will make you question your relationship with God, your therapist, and your car’s subwoofer.
In my experience, having just listened to the album and traditionally needing to narrow it down to my top three favorites: Track 8. “AI Phobias” is a banger. An unapologetic ripcord, blasting you with the absolutes about what we are becoming and can’t stop, unfortunately. Track 5. “Wolves” feels like a Nostradamus prediction, with fragments of well wishes if we should take the red pill.
And finally Track 6. “Karma Goddess” feels like a mature realization about many songs they’ve written in the past about lingering too long on emotional subjectivity. The rock aspect of it, on the level of tonology, is its own hypnosis. It will really take you over and help you realize what you need to be listening to when you retire from the crap that your kids now deem “brain rot.”
There’s a reason they’ve survived this long without ever becoming ironic or irrelevant: Chevelle is sincere. Maybe too sincere. They’re the type of band that treats every riff like it’s a moral decision. That sincerity has kept them from being “cool,” but it’s also what’s kept them real. And in 2025, being real matters more than being revolutionary, especially in a genre that eats its young and forgets its veterans.
Chevelle is still here, still angry, still making music that sounds like it’s trying to find God in an empty strip mall parking lot at 3 am. Bright As Blasphemy isn’t just a new album, it’s a spiritual continuation of the same conversation they’ve been having with us since Wonder What’s Next dropped in 2002. Whether anyone’s been listening or not, well, that’s beside the point because Chevelle doesn’t chase trends. They outlast them. And that, honestly, might be the most blasphemous thing of all.
Chevelle’s new album, Bright As Blasphemy, arrives this Friday (15th) via Alchemy Recordings. Pre-orders are available at this location.
