Chevelle Point #1

The Tennessean
May 10, 1999

taken directly w/o permission from http://www.onnashville.com/music/tenn/chevelle-051099.html

By Rick de Yampert
staff, The Tennessean

These days many folks consider grunge to be a four-letter word. But that hasn't stopped Chevelle, a Chicago-based trio of brothers, from lighting a votive candle for St. Kurt (Cobain), then gluing the tattered shards of grunge back together.

But Chevelle's skull-jarring debut, Point #1, isn't mere grunge redux. Rather, the band has taken the bruised corpse of grunge (a k a Nirvana) and stitched it together with body parts from such neo-metal bands as Tool and Rage Against the Machine. The result: a musical beast that provokes with its howls and growls and its whimpers.

Singer-guitarist Pete Loeffler wanders from a murmur to a roar as he spouts such Gen-X credos as "Back off peer" and "Anyone lose a god, 'cause I found a god." But don't think Loeffler's rage roar is his most potent weapon. It's his occasionally sniveling murmur, with its hint of alienation, menace and even psychosis, that's most striking.

Similarly, Loeffler's guitar work alternates between surgical precision and sonic bombs that sound like he's taken a hatchet to his instrument. Meanwhile, drummer brother Sam and bassist brother Joe bring a noise that's somewhere between hard alternative and new metal.

Fittingly, all this glorious post-grunge chaos is sutured together by Steve Albini ... yep, that master producer who worked with St. Kurt. Ironically, Chevelle takes its name from one of those 1960s muscle cars. But far from being retro, Chevelle has retooled grunge for the new millennium.

(c) 1999 The Tennessean

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