Chastity is for the skids, the headbangers, the freaks. Chastity is for everyone who has suffered and survived the lethal combination of suburban overculture and mental distress. Chastity is especially for everyone who didn’t survive—the ones who didn’t get out. Brandon Williams did, luckily, and his work with Chastity has been to collect people like him, who got out by the skin of their teeth.
Chastity’s first three full-length records—2018’s Death Lust, 2019’s Home Made Satan, and 2022’s Suffer Summer—formed a trilogy that defined a 4 year arc of the band’s contribution to outsider music. Each record was informed by Williams’ life, but each was also conceptual and interpretive, refracting his experiences through a level of remove. On Chastity’s upcoming, self-titled fourth record, there is no such distance: Williams decided to write a fully non-fiction work. Incoming September 13, 2024 on Deathwish Inc. (US), Dine Alone (Canada), and Big Scary Monsters (UK/E) Chastity is a 13-track record about the things that have always run through the band’s records—struggle, death, despair, redemption, darkness, and light—but this time, the songs ascend to new depths of intensity and desperation, new heights of resolution and power. “It’s really about the first nosedive that I did as a young person,” says Williams. “It’s a record about struggle, about the missing years. It’s also a thank you to some people in my life.”
Today, Chastity album opener “Jaw Locked” premieres. Williams continues, “For a few years we’ve closed our live show with the same song, but we’ve never really had a song that opens our live show totally right. I am so excited that we’ve found that in this song ‘Jaw Locked’, and that we can open the self-titled album with this song as well.”
Listen / share / playlist “Jaw Locked” on DSP’s.
Listen / share “Jaw Locked” on YouTube.
Chastity hurtles through melodic hardcore, shoegaze, and emo, all magnificently and enormously rendered thanks to slick work from John Paul Peters (Propagandhi, Comeback Kid), who engineered and mixed the record. Recorded at Peters’ Private Ear Recording in Winnipeg in March 2024, Chastity’s guitars have never sounded so immediate and towering, sometimes exploding into a sputtering, ripped-speaker chaos. And there are perhaps the most ferocious bass and drums sounds of the year on Chastity, splitting the difference between gnarly-as-fuck generator-show tones and vividly textured, hi-fi chest-beaters.
The new record arrives on the heels of a whirlwind six years for Chastity. Williams founded the project in Whitby Ontario and from the start, it’s been a project of absolution via community connection. There weren’t any venues for independent punk music in the suburban town, so Williams and his friends started throwing punk shows in a barn on Whitby’s rural outskirts. People took notice: Before long, Ontario punk stalwarts like PUP and Metz were making the pilgrimage to the barn to headline gigs, and profits from the shows went to a regional youth mental health services. Chastity spent the next years touring North America including shows with Sunny Day Real Estate, Alexisonfire, and Deafheaven, culminating in their spring 2024 headline run, with a set that synced to an original feature film projected behind the stage.
Now, Chastity will tour alongside Fucked Up in support of Chastity and will close out the year with a highly anticipated set at The Fest in Gainesville, FL. Pre-order / pre-save Chastity here ahead of its September 13 release date and look for more news soon.
Chastity, on tour:
September 12 Oshawa, ON @ The Biltmore Theatre ^
September 13 Montreal, QC @ Foufounes Electriques ^
September 14 Ottawa, ON @ The 27 Club ^
September 17 Winnipeg, MB @ The Park Theatre ^
September 18 Saskatoon, SK @ Capitol Music Club ^
September 19 Edmonton, AB @ The Buckingham ^
September 20 Calgary, AB @ Modern Love ^
September 21 Kelowna, BC @ Reverly ^
September 23 Victoria, BC @ Capital Ballroom ^
September 24 Nanaimo, BC @ The Queen’s ^
September 25 Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl ^
October 25 Gainesville, FL @ The Fest [Heartwood Soundstage]
^ w/ Fucked Up
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to Stephanie at Another Side!]
