Welcome to the Boolin Tunes Staff Spotlight, a special segment on the site in which we dive deep into a classic or simply personally beloved album to shine a light on releases that we feel deserve a second glance.
I’ve been speaking a lot in pieces across the site recently about the formative years of my music taste, and somehow, I’ve neglected to mention the amount of influence Chelsea Grin’s 2014 outing Ashes to Ashes had on me. Releasing around the time I was getting back into metal properly, there was something about this album’s sound that just… clicked with me. I had heard Chelsea Grin before, of course. “Crewcabanger” and “Recreant” were already mainstays in my playlists at the time – but Ashes to Ashes was different. Even back then when my understanding of musical nuance was at an all-time low, I could tell there was something more going on here.
That something, of course, was then-guitarist/general guitar prodigy Jason Richardson. Having recently graduated from his time with Born of Osiris, and previously All Shall Perish, Richardson brought a technical flair to Chelsea Grin’s sound that I don’t think many would’ve expected. Sure, the album still largely centres around violent chugging and brutal breakdowns, but it all feels so much more earned when contrasted by Richardson’s soaring, shredding leads and djenty riff work.
Even outside of Richardson, however, the band seemed to really hit a creative stride with Ashes to Ashes. At that point standing as a six-piece, and now having years of experience under their belts the band had more than enough power in their arsenal to knock something like this out. Standing at a monstrous 15 tracks, and just a few seconds short of a full hour in runtime; Ashes to Ashes is a beast of an album. That’s not just due to its length, however.
Then-longstanding vocalist Alex Koehler really hit a peak on here. Showcasing his full vocal range, from the dirtiest of gutturals to the most piercing of highs, Koehler is a true standout across Ashes to Ashes. Further, with this being the first release to contain then-new co-vocalist and drummer Pablo Viveros, their chemistry was apparent from the jump on this thing.
I first heard “Clockwork” when the official music video dropped around the time of the album’s release, and I was absolutely floored by just how much more mature this sounded than their previous work. While 2011’s My Damnation and 2012’s Evolve were certainly signs of the band moving away from its standard fare deathcore roots, with Ashes to Ashes, and specifically with “Clockwork”, the band signaled that their transformation; their evolution if you will, had completed.
Instrumental/interlude-esque title tracks “Ashes…” and “…To Ashes” to me demonstrate just how far the group had come instrumentally. With the former serving as a cinematic build-up to the latter’s insane shred-fest, it’s one of the most insanely fun moments across the group’s discography. Gorgeous sweeps, technical drumming and djenty riffage aplenty, I swear by the fact that “…To Ashes“ was and is the group’s opus.
The band sadly took a slight nosedive upon the departure of Richardson in late 2015. The technicality was almost all dropped, and while the group’s attempt to ‘go back to their roots’ with Self-Inflicted seemed novel on paper, in practice it fell astounding flat after just how good Ashes to Ashes was.
Since then, a shifting line-up (including the replacement of Koehler with former Lorna Shore vocalist Tom Barber) has certainly led the band into a better direction, with 2018’s Eternal Nightmare being a fun (if not wholly remarkable) deathcore romp, and their recent singles continuing that trend. However, I’ve long since accepted that Ashes to Ashes was a true lightning-in-a-bottle moment for Chelsea Grin. A release that could not have come at a different time, and one that was so uncharacteristically good for a band such as this that, to this day, it still puzzles me.
For all things Chelsea Grin, including coverage of their (hopefully) soon-to-be-released follow-up to Eternal Nightmare, keep it locked on Boolin Tunes. In any case, we hope you’ll join us next week for another retrospective from our team.