Catherine Wheel: Chrome
Catherine Wheel: Chrome– It’s one of the largest compliments when a record matches the vision described on its cover. Catherine Wheel’s second record Chrome is a drowning so palpable you can feel yourself losing your extremities as you breathe through the last remaining air pockets inside your eyes. The ripples becoming larger, and the thrashing ceases to cause any sensation. This is the moment of being overcome. No longer breathing you enter into a void of regretting a life now expired.
Chrome is the morose dictation of your failures: the things you never made right, the things you never said. It details your losses with a blow by blow account of each and every bloodletting. These are the most private, most hidden of your inner monologues now given a definitive torturous paraphrasing forcing you to look back apologetic and broken.
Catherine Wheel’s merciless descent towards the grabbing fingers of the sea floor’s algae is unrivaled. It’s past madness, and beyond the reach of all help. It takes the final moments of it’s cognizance to bid farewell, with its insides throbbing and jutting from beneath the skin, a full reveal with no secrets. The depths and sinking, though slow and agonizing, contain glimpses that wash over you like a gentle paralysis. As your heart coagulates and dies, you remember the softer images, the people you loved, the nostalgia of things before you forged ahead with this leap. It’s these images you can cradle physically, speak to for guidance and kneel over to protect. These are the moments of Chrome‘s silent reprieve.
Catherine Wheel’s Chrome is the language of drastic, painful change. While there are a large number of groups today trying to replicate their faultless concoction, it’s of no use. You cannot siphon or channel true pain through seance or fashion. These bands fail to realize that to do so authentically, you must first conquer death. Chrome is Catherine Wheel’s arresting and brilliant manifesto of resurrection…11/10