Chastity Reveals New Alt Country-Leaning Single 'Offing'

Chastity is for the skids, the headbangers, the freaks. Chastity is for everyone who has suffered and survived the lethal combination of suburban overculture and mental distress. Chastity is especially for everyone who didn’t survive—the ones who didn’t get out. Brandon Williams did, luckily, and his work with Chastity has been to collect people like him, who got out by the skin of their teeth.

The new self-titled LP, out September 13, hurtles through melodic hardcore, shoegaze, and emo, all magnificently and enormously rendered thanks to slick work from John Paul Peters (Propagandhi, Comeback Kid), who engineered and mixed the record. Recorded at Peters’ Private Ear Recording in Winnipeg in March 2024, Chastity’s guitars have never sounded so immediate and towering.  On the softer side, the album's heart-wrenching third single "Offing" has arrived with a visualizer.  Chastity's Brandon Williams comments, "This is the most country the project's ever gone, some townie emo. A song about getting my meds mixed and thinking about death, approval of others, living to see another day."

Chastity arrives on the heels of a whirlwind six years for the band. Williams founded the project in Whitby Ontario and from the start, it's been a project of absolution via community connection. There weren’t any venues for independent punk music in the suburban town, so Williams and his friends started throwing punk shows in a barn on Whitby’s rural outskirts. People took notice: Before long, Ontario punk stalwarts like PUP and Metz were making the pilgrimage to the barn to headline gigs, and profits from the shows went to a regional youth mental health services. Chastity spent the next years touring North America including shows with Sunny Day Real Estate, Alexisonfire, and Deafheaven, culminating in their spring 2024 headline run, with a set that synced to an original feature film projected behind the stage. 

Chastity’s first three full-length records—2018’s Death Lust, 2019’s Home Made Satan, and 2022’s Suffer Summer—formed a trilogy that defined a 4 year arc of the band’s contribution to outsider music. Each record was informed by Williams’ life, but each was also conceptual and interpretive, refracting his experiences through a level of remove. On Chastity’s upcoming, self-titled fourth record, there is no such distance: Williams decided to write a fully non-fiction work.

Incoming September 13, 2024 on Deathwish Inc. (US), Dine Alone (Canada), and Big Scary Monsters (UK/E) Chastity is a 13-track record about the things that have always run through the band’s records—struggle, death, despair, redemption, darkness, and light—but this time, the songs ascend to new depths of intensity and desperation, new heights of resolution and power.  “It’s really about the first nosedive that I did as a young person,” says Williams. “It’s a record about struggle, about the missing years. It’s also a thank you to some people in my life.”

Chastity will tour alongside F*cked Up throughout September and will close out the year with a highly anticipated set at The Fest in Gainesville, FL.  Pre-order / pre-save Chastity here and look for more news soon.

Chastity, on tour:

September 12  Oshawa, ON @ The Biltmore Theatre ^
September 13  Montreal, QC @ Foufounes Electriques ^
September 14  Ottawa, ON @ The 27 Club ^
September 17  Winnipeg, MB @ The Park Theatre ^
September 18  Saskatoon, SK @ Capitol Music Club ^
September 19  Edmonton, AB @ The Buckingham ^
September 20  Calgary, AB @ Modern Love ^
September 21  Kelowna, BC @ Reverly ^
September 23  Victoria, BC @ Capital Ballroom ^
September 24  Nanaimo, BC @ The Queen's ^
September 25  Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl ^
October 25  Gainesville, FL @ The Fest [Heartwood Soundstage]

^ w/ F*cked Up

Photo credit: Chris Payne.

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