Will Jones
Las Vegas is synonymous with excess, but its music scene runs deeper than the casino glow. While some acts cater to spectacle, others mine the city’s darker edges for something more personal and unfiltered. Velvet Chains falls squarely into the latter camp.
“Hurt Me,” their latest release, kicks off with something that feels like if Marilyn Manson, NIN, and Ministry got left in a room together too long and spontaneously combusted into a new evil, gnarly sound. Those first few industrial-hued notes twist the rusty knife immediately, setting the table for what follows. Crushing guitars. Haunting melodies. A vocal performance that refuses to choose between vulnerable and furious because the song needs both at once.
It circles obsession and surrender, the particular math of wanting someone bad for you. Emotional masochism. Love that feels like salvation and self-destruction happening simultaneously. The industrial-leaning artwork and the video coming in March lean into the same tension. Power, submission, and the blurry line where they stop being opposites.
A second single, “Dead In The Head,” will follow mid-March, continuing the heavier direction. They’ve got Billboard Active Rock appearances behind them, an international fanbase that found them the old-fashioned way, and a reputation for shows that leave people wrecked in the right way. Velvet Chains will also join Des Rocs on the road from mid-March through early April, with a Los Angeles date locked in for March 31 plus stops in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and more. The run finds the band sharing stages across the country, bringing their high-energy live show to audiences along the way.
This is the kind of run that builds a band incrementally, city by city, until one day you look up and they’ve been at it for years, and the rooms keep getting bigger while their name never seems to leave your frontal lobe for long. This new era promises a harder sound and attitude for Velvet Chains.
Get tickets to see them in LA (here)
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