There’s this feeling you get when you stumble across a band and you can immediately tell that they have spent years putting in work on stage. You can just hear it in the way they play together —tight, fearless and completely comfortable in their own vibe. This feeling is what you get with Chavez Cartel.
After tearing up stages across Australia and even taking their live show all the way to SXSW London earlier this year, they finally dropped their debut album, This Is How It Feels and to be honest, it hits like a breath of fresh air.
They didn’t have to go to the studio or polish every note until it sounded overly perfect, they just kept all the tough edges in. You can literally hear the sweat and the buzz of the amps. It is a gritty, loud mix of alt-rock, post-punk, indie and a touch of trippy psychedelia. As the band likes to put it, this is a proper Rock n Roll record and they didn’t lie.
Across it’s 11 tracks, the album feels like a real, lived in story from start to finish. It kicks off things with “Different Underneath” and closes with “Still Shine”. Every track earns it’s run time as you enjoy every bit of the guitar driven world.
“What do ya say” leans into that raw, unpolished vulnerability. The lyric captures the heavy cycle of a burnout. I hear the sadness inside my sorrow/I hear the madness come round/Rolling around”. Instead of masking the frustration, they put it at the front and center over a gritty wall of guitars.
“For Better, For Worse” hits on the messy, stuck-in-a-loop reality of relationships. It shows exhaustion, pride and emotional anchors that keep people trapped in situations they know they should walk away from. “She knows she never met anyone like him before/ She told him she’s leaving a thousand times again/ She knows she will never make it through the door” portrays the painful tug or war between knowing what you should do and feeling entirely unable to move a step from it.
“All I Know” hits an even more introspective and vulnerable gear, dealing head-on with emotional baggage and the ache of homesickness. Even while you wade through those dark, turbulent waters, You just want to get back home and find a way back to the one place you feel safe the most; Home. The message here is survival.
One thing we love about this album is what it really is about. Built straight from real, working class life. We all know that heavy feeling of clocking out after a long week, dealing with boredom, frustration and just feeling zoned out from the real world. Chavez Cartel doesn’t sugarcoat all that grind. They say it just as it is.
Here’s where the magic is; They don’t let the heavy stuff win. Right there in the midst of all the loud noise, there’s so much heart, love and genuine hope. It’s that stubborn, comforting feeling that no matter how tough things might get, everything is going to turn out just how they were meant to only if you hold on and keep pushing. They take all that ordinary life and turn it into an anthem worth screaming along to.
With more shows lined up to wrap a huge 2026 and big international plans already brewing for the coming year, Chavez Cartel aren’t just chasing the hype. They are here to build a real community and stick around for a long time.
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