#through today

The band came together during pandemic isolation in 2020, the general loneliness amplified by the band’s remote Wollongong location. Padraic Skehan and his partner Binx were both drummers—perhaps a hint at how Chimers’ driving, propulsive sound evolved—but Skehan switched to guitar and voice. A self-titled album emerged in 2021, and as the COVID receded, Chimers took its body-pulping assault to the public, earning something like cult status. Henry Rollins is a fan. Junkee.com called their debut "One of the strongest Australian rock records of the year.”

Now, the follow-up comes on 12XU in America (and Poison City in Australia), a bold, rapturously noisy onslaught of head-battering percussion, razor-sharp strumming and singing like a smoke mirage disappearing in your hands. Ten songs in half an hour, no breaks, no divergences, no filler.

“Generator” blares a sort of sweetness, its massive guitar sounds lurching in tuneful directions while drum fills go off like firecrackers on a string. It’s this one, with its yearning, dissolving lyrics embedded in blistering guitar tone, which makes the Hüsker Dü comparisons seem right. “Gossip” ramps up a lyrical spray of electric guitar into serrated, stop-start menace, while “Glossary” flirts with post-rock introspection before putting the hammer down.

“An Echo” seems, at first, like a restful interlude. All lucid guitar clarity and a pulse like drum, it takes on the oceanic pull of the Dirty 3. A violin (Jordan Ireland) moves in and about Binx’s airy croon. And yet, even at slower speeds with less frenetic drumming, Chimers play with intensity. A wild caterwaul scrawls across limpid surfaces, quiet but still unruly.