Chastity Releases Self-Titled New Album

Chastity have released their brand new self-titled album. The release of the record has come with a visualiser video for the recent single ‘Buzzed and Bleached’. Talking about the new record, Brandon Williams says “I’ve been avoiding this type of beat since the beginning of the band, but the truth is is that I love it. This song’s about grieving old times, blinking and they’re gone.”

The new 13-track record is about the things that have always run through Chastity’s other albums — struggle, death, despair, redemption, darkness, and light — but this time, the songs are more developed and filled with intensity. “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.”

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 inspired by Williams’ life, whilst also being conceptual and interpretive. On Chastity, Williams decided to write a fully non-fiction album.

The record experiments with different genres such as melodic hardcore and shoegaze. On this album, Chastity’s guitars have never sounded so immediate and towering, as well as featuring the most ferocious bass and drums sounds of the band’s career.

The new record arrives after an intense six years for Chastity. Williams founded the group in Whitby, Ontario in Canada. From the start, it’s been a project of absolution through community connection. There weren’t any venues for independent punk music in William’s area, and so, because of this, alongside his friends, he started throwing punk shows in a barn on Whitby’s rural outskirts. This evidently seemed to create an impact as 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 regional youth mental health services. Because of this, Chastity has made a name for themselves touring with bands such as Deafheaven and Alexisonfire.

This new era begins on opener, and single, ‘Jaw Locked’ which is then followed-up with ‘Electrical Tower Dive’.

Elsewhere on the album, ‘Offing’ is “the most country the project’s ever gone, some townie emo,” which continues the heavy themes prevalent on this new record. Williams says, it’s “a song about getting my meds mixed and thinking about death, approval from others, living to see another day.” ‘Offing’ mixes Chastity’s trademark old school emo approach with a decidedly country influence, creating a catchy sing-along type of song.

The self-titled album closes with ‘Drawing the Sun Back in the Corner of the Paper,’ a beautiful and affirming ending to the new Chastity record, centered on the band’s first and enduring idea: Life is less shitty if we live it together.