Chastity "Home Made Satan"

Chastity’s second full-length record, Home Made Satan, is a more barbed direction for Whitby, Canada-native Brandon Williams. It’s an emotional and political concept record, the 2nd instalment of a building trilogy, from the perspective of a young man who’s spent too much time alone, allowing paranoia to drown out the reality of the outside world. It’s an album about fear, an intense meditation on youth, suburban life and extremism in a sinking Western World.

Williams, who produces all his own music, created something with a strong cinematic nature, a record that sounds somewhere between My Chemical Romance and The Smiths (even as he cites Morrissey’s alignment with the UK’s far-right as the complete opposite of his own political view). Recorded in a small studio in London, Ontario, with his full live band in the few weeks between a European tour with Fucked Up and a seven-week North American tour, Williams crafted Home Made Satan like he was producing a film—his bandmates were the cast members, his engineer the cinematographer, and Williams the writer. “It’s visual,” he says. “I’m scoring this picture I have, and trying to get it as close to people’s ears as it is in my mind.”

The new songs are gothier and hookier than ever, recalling ‘80s goth staples like The Cure. Home Made Satan’s got more eyeshadow than 2018’s acclaimed shoegaze-meets-hardcore Death Lust, and it’s got pop sensibility for days. Williams has toned down the reverb, too, on the new record, with an emphasis on vocals and lyrics. Home Made Satan, with its lines about commies and masochism and the evangelical right, is meant to sing along to.

With Home Made Satan, Williams chooses a side. And that side is with youth on the fringe, those in the struggle, and the far-left. With this record, Chastity rises as a young voice for revolutionary thought, action and song.

Track Listing: 
01. Flames 
02. Dead Relatives 
03. Spirit Meet Up 
04. Sun Poisoning 
05. Anxiety 
06. Last Year's Lust 
07. Bliss 
08. The Girls I Know Don't Think So 
09. I Still Feel The Same 
10. Strife