“Nothing more than God’s mistake.”
It’s very hard to leave the shadows of genre titans. Bands are always challenged to craft a sound that both honours the past and skips into the future, a lofty goal that is often impossible. To make matters more difficult, certain artists act like ‘gravity wells’ due to the incredible advances they made for their scenes. Today’s case in point is The Dillinger Escape Plan, a key influence to UK hardcore-meets-mathcore upstarts Chaos Reigns.
This band has recently been lighting up the small venue circuit, picking up key support slots for Harms Way and The Armed. On the band’s latest EP Sweet Violence they take the technical moments found in their pre-2020 work and double down, moving strongly into the mathcore field. This bombastic sound is brimming with Dillinger-isms, particularly their most in-your-face and catchy moments circa One of Us is the Killer. Idiosyncratic shuffles pepper the quiet pauses in all the tracks, creating fucked up cabaret breaks or wild heavy metal diversions. The talented Jason Heightman provides vocals that will have you curling your hands into fists and punching the air, and his subtle British diction sets his delivery apart from the crowd.
Opener “False Gods” lurches in with swaggering loose chords and wild screaming guitars. It’s a minute and a half before the band really cranks the tempo, but the all signs indicate it’s coming. This spirited section is its own micro-song with a kick-ass chorus (“I lit the match / Just to watch it burn”). Closing on a bridge with stabbing breaks and reprise of the lurching introduction, “False Gods” is a strong start for the album. “Graveyard Shift” impressed us when it dropped as a single, bristling with panic chords throughout its fully-fury opening. Landing in a brief and jaunty break, they kick into a grooving earworm section (“I’m down here on my knees / Can’t you see”). It’s an uncommon case where the bridge is catchier than its chorus. From these first two tracks it’s clear that Chaos Reigns are taking a different approach to the fundamentals of repetition – it will take you several listens to notice the callbacks within each song.
The shortest track, “Violent Delights”, kicks off at Converge tempo (that is, the angriest rock and roll you’ve ever heard) and spins into a slew of the EP’s goofiest excursions, including full on Ben Weinman-shredding and hand claps. “Snakes & Branches” is the most accessibly structured track, as a slidey main riff snakes through a track that’s complete with verse, pre-chorus and chorus. If this is Chaos Reigns making a ‘normal’ song, it’s clear they can’t resist making each part uniquely unhinged. “Sins of Success” is the last short song, summing all the qualities of the prior tracks to become my personal favourite. Particularly strong is its closing minute where Jason Heightman belts over feedbacking guitars before the track ends on a relatively straightforward riff, slammed with such power that it leaves a mark.
The EP wraps with “The Lotus King”, a massive song as long as the prior three put together. You can tell the band’s intent has changed, as the riffing strays into melodic territory, and Heightman’s vocals inch toward ‘clean’ singing. The true melodic stretch lands at four minutes, in with vocal contributions from Jason Chapman of Mallory Knox. After a full EP where the ideas have rushed past so fast, “The Lotus King” homes in on this melodic centre by way of vocal duet between Heightman and Chapman; it’s the one moment of true indulgence, and the eventual fade out feels truly earned.
On Sweet Violence the ridiculous technicality of Chaos Reigns is married with a keen ear for attention grabbing moments, ensuring that there’s method to their madness. Furthermore, Sweet Violence is almost completely free of the tropes of metallic hardcore that you might have heard enough of – choreographed breakdowns, two-step beats, or riffs that try to ride on machismo alone (though one “blegh” is allowed on “Violent Delights“). The flawless production further seals the deal. The only shame is how clearly it wears its influences on its sleeve, and this isn’t really on the band – they’ve simply dropped this in a year where The Dillinger Escape Plan have reformed, and Better Lovers dropped an album only a month ago. As Chaos Reigns demonstrate a perfected sound, their focus in the future should explore the very limits of what mathcore can be in order to become true flagbearers for the modern scene.
8/10
Sweet Violence drops on the 29th November and can be pre-saved here.