The members of Hard Chiller come from bands like From Indian Lakes, the Velvet Teen, and the Warriors. Co-leader Steve Choi is in RX Bandits and Sound Of Animals Fighting, and he also worked with the late Lil Peep before Peep passed away. "Soft Trip," Hard Chiller's fuzz-punching new single, started out as a track that Choi made for Peep, but I have to imagine that the end result is a long ways away from what that would've been.
"Soft Trip" is the second single from Hard Chiller's upcoming full-length debut BABY!; we've already posted first single "Hotboxhead." The new track works as a kind of grunge hymn. It's somewhere within the same heavy shoegaze zone as a whole lot of recent indie rock, but it's got a melodic lift that really sets it apart. Joe Vannuncchi says, "It reminds me of the stuff on the radio around 2002, when really heavy songs could dominate if the hooks were real. I love that it's relentlessly heavy and combines some of the stuff from that era but it also tricks the listener into forgetting that it has two key shifts. Some of my favorite pop songs of all time manage to be very tricky without the listener noticing, which is a triumph."
The "Soft Trip" video is entirely made up of footage from the 1998 Nintendo 64 game WCW/nWo Revenge, and that's enough to send me into a nostalgic fugue state. The footage edits really nicely to the song, too. Check it out below.
BABY! is out 8/1 via Born Losers.
