Chevelle's "Gun" Deserves Full Blast Treatment

Are you up for a rock song capable of leaving you physically uncomfortable after you've listened? Might I suggest "Take Out The Gunman", courtesy of Grayslake, Illinois trio Chevelle. The only color your knuckles are bound to be is ghostly white. It's Pete Loeffler who maintains a high anxiety level by sticking to that one, heartbeat accelerating riff. He's the assassin who has his gun trained squarely on you. He's content to let you squirm while the wheels in his mind turn feverishly. Sam Loeffler shuns the sphere of head spinning drum posing that many a hard rocker uses as his bread and butter selling point. What force he exerts comes through with the tap on the cymbal portion of his kit. Steady as it goes it forces you to choose the lesser of the two demonic evils. Focus on the muscle part of the unhinged deviant (the guitar) or his finesse skill set (the drums). Pete proves he's well schooled in the area of how to draw your voice out to obtain maximum creepiness. You get inside the wacky wiring of a soul or, in this case an assortment of souls who realize opting for action over reaction would keep them all above ground. If you like capturing the numerous posterity moments on phone or, for any old school chroniclers out there, camcorder, "Take Out The Gunman" is the best possible variety of you are there probings of unsteady fellow beings. I applaud Chevelle for daring to put out a song that crooked its ravaged little finger at you, encouraging you to think before planning the next move. Pete calls the action with a pushed to the limits strain of unsettled nervous slow recoil that you fear isn't long for the domain of rational thought. From that first frame where unsettling light has our hero in full on "Where am I?" mode to his sizing up his armed adversary (knees, between the eyes, where do I aim this bad boy?)we've joined the in progress haunted house of a man fully committed to the moment only because to do otherwise could prove at best dangerous and, at worst, lethal. I can't really say this is a "legend of" story song. More likely it's a snapshot of your worst nightmare brought to uncensored fruition. Imagine you're in your bedroom chasing down lost snooze time when suddenly an intruder's presence eviscerates the alluring calm. Truth isn't merely stranger than fiction, it has leaped off the page and wants to claim your carcass as its everlasting prize. Dean Bernardini's bass intensifies the lit fuse so viciously that we're offically put on notice that Pete's saga isn't capable of allowing you to simply walk back out into the mist. This first round of ammo from "La Gargola" is explosive, oddly enough because of the long term way in which it smolders. No quick kills here. The agony lingers. The masochist in you won't be able to resist keeping your gaze trained on the buzzing drama Pete lures us into. "Take Out The Gunman" scores by coming in and going out with a sinister, pre-meditated bang.