CHIME OBLIVION - CHIME OBLIVION (2025)

Chime Oblivion may need more of an introduction than its members. It’s one of those projects that started the way these things do: Bow Wow Wow’s David Barbarossa reached out to Osees’s John Dwyer and the two hit it off well enough to hole up in a studio and write a few songs together. The resulting five days’ worth of ideas were sent to ugEXPLODE Records founder and all-around punk renaissance man Weasel Walter, Osees bandmate Tom Dolas (tapped specifically for marimba duties), Bent Arcana’s Brad Caulkins, and H.L. Nelly, the Oakland DIY fixture Dwyer met through her project Naked Lights.

The self-titled result is a tight, screechy little punk record, clocking in at 28 minutes and punctuated with momentary interludes. Sometimes, it’s a full-throttle No Wave cacophony, like on “HEATED HORSES,” which is made primarily of cowbell and Caulkin’s squealing sax. Other times it’s more straight-to-the-point garage punk, delivered with melodic sizzle on “AND AGAIN” or extra thrash on “SMOKE RING.” “THE UNINVITED GUEST” feels the most stereotypically Dwyer-esque; “THE FIEND” is essentially 90 seconds of isolated percussion lodged between a straightforward (if marimba-heavy) garage number.

In its best moments, Chime Oblivion feels like an electrical storm surge behind Nelly’s inexhaustible motormouth. Her delivery is so frenzied, atonal, and breathless it’s as if she’s running around the studio, rolling around the floor and leaping over amplifiers mid-phrase. (The effect is reminiscent enough of Ari Up to make the whole record feel indebted to The Slits.) Although her words periodically compete with the cascade of noise, she’s doing some imaginative lyrical work here. On second single “KISS HER OR BE HER,” she fires off the rather unconventional simile of, “She’s got grace like a VHS tracker.”

That Dwyer referred to Chime Oblivion as “a moment of respite in the unfurling chaos” when announcing the second single has an inadvertent touch of irony to it. This is a record offering little in the way of traditional solace. It’s fun, loud, and moves too fast to settle in its foundations; the image of someone frantically laying down a missing track while hanging off the front of a speeding locomotive comes to mind. As it turns out—at least with a band like this—you can make the whole journey that way.