Chevelle's Island Not Very Inhabitable

You've got two choices when listening to Grayslake, Illinois' Chevelle's new single "The Island". You can marvel at the brass knuckles toughness deeply injected into the band's playing or you can ask yourself is lead vocalist Pete Loeffler trying to sound like he's impersonating The Deftones "My Own Summer (Shove It)". Pete alternates between whiny agony and the unsettled soft whisper Chino Moreno lends to The Deftones single. In a nutshell Pete craves an island, a getaway refuge. We would like to think it's not something highly alcoholic or illegal on city streets. There's definite chemistry in Chevelle. The drums pound you senseless. The guitar backs you into a corner and has you begging for your life. The bass is executed with the nothing to lose ferociousness of a wounded jungle animal. As a unit these guys mean business. Pete's plenty cryptic with what his lyrics are conveying. What creature displays the fangs described? Darned if I know. And what's with the directional inconsistencies. One minute it's "Some little island is all I ask to put you on. The next he's trying to force his prey to go. "This fun is near the end" doesn't give me warm fuzzies. "You've worn out your welcome way too fast" makes me think of the live fast die young crowd rock 'n' roll's landscape has been populated with throughout its history. Chevelle's alt metal techniques are crunchy. Sam Loeffler excels at making his drum kit growl at the listening audience rather than be content with its playing a passive role. The troubling aspect of this tune is that the musical heaviness provides a tarp to throw over the notion that all that's being said is Pete needs an island to escape to. That's the food equivalent of burying an entire shaker of salt on a perfectly serviceable sandwich that didn't need to be suffocated with such overdone condiment. I'm sure lots of us could use an island to escape to. However you don't need a motorcycle rally's aggressiveness to ram that point home. This is metal so I get that "Speak softly and carry a big stick" isn't going to cut it but there's not a lot of depth to what Chevelle's communicating. The track originates from the "La Gargola" album. "Gargola" if Wikipedia is to be believed, is Puerto Rican slang for "someone who likes to party". "The Island" isn't exactly party conducive material. On the contrary on the basis of Pete's vocals alone it's highly unsettling. Towards the end we get some of that knife jabbed in the skull shrieking that metal stakes its bread and butter reputation on. So to review there's a whisper aspect, a whiny trapped animal aspect and an inexcusable pain aspect. Too bad none of them adds up to a single that gets past the curiosity factor stage. "The Island" needs to be vacated at all costs. Seedy neighborhood, little reward, no meat on the bones.