Chevelle released their seventh overall album titled La Gargola this year, debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 album charts. Singles such as ‘Take Out the Gunman’ and ‘Hunter Eats Hunter’ have been strong singles off this album and continuing to attract new fans along the way.
One aspect of the band that they have not been able to shake off is the constant comparisons to such bands as Tool and Helmet, which they have regularly drawn similarities to. This has been a thorn in their side, but drummer Sam Loeffler does not take it personally when this tag comes up.
He shared his thoughts on this subject. “Eventually you kinda go ‘seriously?’,” he said, about the comparison. “We write essentially almost what you would call it radio-ish rock songs. It’s completely different from either band. Once you get a bit of a comparison in a singer, when they are super diehard fans, they can’t see past it.”
“I think a really good example of that is Muse and Radiohead. ‘Let it go. That’s what that guy sounds like.’ He’s not copying anyone. It’s his natural voice. Muse is an amazing band. Radiohead is an amazing band. Those guys go on.”
“Eventually you’ve gotta go ‘come on guys…what do you want us to do?’ When was the last Tool record? Seven or eight years ago, right? At least. We’ve written at least another three records in that time. We’re just writing songs. That’s it. I don’t know what people think we’re doing. Listening to an eight year old Tool record and trying to copy it? It doesn’t make any sense. I know the Tool guys never came up. They don’t think twice about it. They don’t think about us whatsoever.”
“When you’re a rock band, it doesn’t matter what you do. When someone hears you, they’re going to compare you to something. ‘Oh the Strokes! Oh yeah it sounds a lot like the Doors or Led Zeppelin.’ It doesn’t matter. They’re going to compare you to something. That’s the only reason people listen to it and it’s because they recognize something in it that they like.”
“The reality is, that kind of stuff comes up, fine. If you have a problem with the comparison, don’t listen to it. It’s ok. We all learned in kindergarten, if you don’t have anything nice to say….it doesn’t bother me. We have our influences. If you really go back and listen to what our music’s like, I can listen to Helmet Aftertaste, Meantime and Betty and go back to Alice In Chains and even listen to stuff like the Minutemen – stuff that’s really influential to us – Faith No More. These are the records we grew up on and pushed us to write music. If you go back and listen to those records and compare, sure.”
While Loeffler has his influences that helped shape Chevelle’s sound, the music he listens to on his spare time isn’t quite what most may imagine: “I listen to way less music than I used to now, because you start to think about it in terms of your own interests. That being said, a lot of music I listen to is not like our genre, like Every Time I Die and The Bronx are two of my favorite bands right now. Believe it or not, I listen to Duke Ellington and stuff like that because it’s entirely different and you don’t necessarily know where things will go with it. It’s unpredictable which is really nice. Then certain bands come out like Middle Class Rut. They’re amazing records and so fun to listen to. Makes you want to sing along. That’ll be more of a modern rock kinda thing that I’m interested in.”
“Pete [Loeffler, singer/guitarist]’s gone back to a lot of older stuff like the Ministry records have come back up for us – Land of Rape and Honey and Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste. These records that were so influential to us 22 to 24 years ago that helped shape us then. You go back and those records are still great. Recently we got back into Ministry a lot and that’s been fun.”
REI NISHIMOTO