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Chameleon

by trauma ray

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mbx220
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mbx220 Great from start to finish. This record sounds big. Wonderful shoegaze sounds, hitting you with walls of guitar swirls and layers. But it's also lush and serene sounding. Can't stop listening. Favorite track: U.S.D.D.O.S..
pinkflamingott
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pinkflamingott can't find any words to describe how awesome this is. this record is really creating a wall of sound; a huge, loud, seducing, mesmerizing, mindblowing, melancholic, breathtaking wall of sound. this record is loud, therefore turn up the volume and play it loud! Favorite track: Elegy.
Sam Damon
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Sam Damon Shoegaze-Thick, heavy riffs. I just wish the reverb on the vocals wasn’t so high and brought up in the mix a bit. Favorite track: Breath.
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Chameleon via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $13.99 USD or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card
    Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

      $9.99 USD  or more

     

  • Black Vinyl
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Chameleon via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

    Sold Out

  • Emerald Green w/ Black Splatter Vinyl LP (ltd 200, Dais Exclusive)
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Chameleon via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

    Sold Out

  • Cloudy Emerald Green Vinyl LP (ltd 500)
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Chameleon via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

    Sold Out
1.
Ember 04:17
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2.
Torn 03:36
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3.
Chameleon 03:12
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4.
Bardo 03:24
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5.
Bishop 03:37
info
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6.
Elegy 05:39
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7.
Drift 02:40
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8.
Breath 04:17
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9.
Spectre 03:53
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10.
Flare 01:11
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11.
ISO 05:32
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12.
U.S.D.D.O.S. 07:16
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about

Since first bonding over Slowdive at a Texas karaoke bar six years ago, musicians Uriel Avila and Jonathan Perez have grown trauma ray into Fort Worth’s foremost flag bearer of crushing shoegaze. A five-piece rounded out by bassist Darren Baun, drummer Nicholas Bobotas, and guitarist Coleman Pruitt, the band’s debut album, 'Chameleon,' captures their evolving sound at an apex of majestic devastation. A fusion of downer hooks, gauzy melancholia, and bulldozer riffs, the album heaves and crashes across 50 minutes of stacked amplifier alchemy. Lyrically the songs trace similarly lofty and brooding terrain; Avila says "The theme is death. And a chameleon, like death, can shape-shift in and out our lives in different forms."
Chameleon opens with "Ember," dreamy and distant, alternately anthemic and apocalyptic, defeated and deafening. Lead single "Bishop" perfectly encapsulates trauma ray’s depth and dimension, ripping out of the gate with “the biggest, baddest, saddest wall of sound.” Lyrics about being burnt at the stake and "tossed in the flame" float above a stop-start assault of precision distortion, eventually expanding into a lush, heavy, sorrowful end coda. "Spectre" is a mysterious, introspective dirge, envisioned as a "mellow, slowcore, Duster-thing," all feeling and heavy fuzz chords (with no lead guitar). Avila wrote it, "to be a hymnal" from the perspective of someone who won't let go - a ghost, an ex, a shadow self.
Although the album is rich with subtleties, graceful lulls, and "breaths of air," the band’s three guitar attack is its defining force, a power flexed to its peak on "Bardo." Perez’s intentions were blunt: "I wanted to write a riff that was hard as fuck." The result is alternately mean and eerie, veering between noisy one string bends and surging headbang, mapping a middle ground between Unwound and early-Deftones. One of trauma ray’s greatest gifts is their ability to make doomy, sledgehammer heaviness sound like an earworm, without production tricks or gimmicks: "Riff, verse, chorus, three guitar parts – that’s all you need." This quality is particularly apparent on the title track, a churning slab of amplifier worship, swirling chords, and heavenly, defeated vocals about not belonging, shape-shifting, and death ("A twisted face / Void of attention / An empty space / In your reflection").
"U.S.D.D.O.S" closes the album, swaying across seven minutes of grey skied guitar and haunted voice, subtly thickening as it deepens. Feedback and shrapnel gradually begin raining down, like a satellite disintegrating in the atmosphere. Titled as an acronym after a poem by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño that loosely translates to "a dream within a dream," the melody softens, smears, and then disappears, slowly swallowed by the gravity of eternal descent. 'Chameleon' is a masterpiece of craft, balance, melody, lyricism, and gravity, flexing a fresh vision of loud-quiet-loud architectures and the vertigo depths of blasted harmonics. From Slowdive to Nothing, to Hum and beyond, the band absorb and expand on their influences into a rare and dedicated alchemy. trauma ray's cinematic tempest is a gathering storm only just taking flight.

credits

released October 25, 2024

Recorded and Produced by Mario Cernadas
Mixed and Mastered by Corey Coffman
Designed by Nathaniel Young

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trauma ray Fort Worth, Texas

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