Initial Thoughts

Welcome, music cosmonauts, to our first installment of Dissection Table, where we meticulously analyze a single album released in the last five years like a colony growing in a Petri dish. This is less about whether the blob you scraped off your shoe possesses the "it" factor or not, and more about the fact that, holy shit, Dr. Frankenstein, that thing is alive! This is more autopsy with reverence than review, sprinkled with my radical hot takes and oozing with love for anything that dares to be different. Here, we muse about our lives like budget philosophers, take a scalpel to each song, and peel back the guts to see what snarls back. 

But first, I want to take you on the journey of what hooked me on synthpop in the first place. Back in my high school days (circa 2010s), the YouTube algorithm randomly and inexplicably recommended "Are Friends Electric?" by commercial synthpop pioneer, Gary Numan. From there, my entire world expanded: Thomas Dolby, Oingo Boingo, Ultravox, and DEVO followed diligently. In the end, I would never be the same. I'll scream it loudly and proudly: I'm a DEVO devotee. Their staccato post-punk jitters, soldered to the glossy plastic of '80s commercialized synthpop, makes them sound more like a panicked Roomba on too much DayQuil than anything else I've heard. DEVO metastasized amid the industrial decay, factory overflow, and religious rigidity of Akron, Ohio, and was heavily influenced by the motorik krautrock scene upheld by German 70s bands like Neu! and Kraftwerk. Despite their #1 hit being the more uplifting "Whip It" (a song that literally suggests beating your problems up and whose music video suggests taking life by the BDSM reins) most of their songs have a grim cynicism for the American dream that borders on paranoia (which feels almost too relevant these days). Spasmodic melodies and iconic jumpsuit costumes cemented their legacy, ensuring this oddball band of brothers and art students inspired many others. Today, I'm diving into the bin to unveil one modern disciple I believe is playing homage to DEVO in their soundscapes. Chewy Lucas is a band formed in the industrial suburbia of Fort Wayne, Indiana, not too dissimilar from the perfect storm that led to DEVO’s lyrical strengths. Their recent album, Get Chromed (2025), is exciting to me in a way unlike anything I've heard in a while.

The first thing that hit me when listening to Get Chromed by Chewy Lucas was the giant, chrome-coated lobster staring me down from the album cover like it knows something I don't. The secrets of chrome, perhaps. The last thing that hit me was the "fuck you" sardonically tossed out at the end of the so-called "Hidden Track," as though the band itself dispises you for eagerly surviving the 20 seconds of manufactured silence between the last song and the official end. You go into a song like "Hidden Track" hoping that something insightful sends you off: one final sermon or epiphany, and instead what you get is a middle finger that mocks you for expecting any gold at the end of the rainbow. So, in other words, I kind of love it. Like me, it's a bit flirtatious with crassness and knows not to take itself too seriously because of that. If it isn't crystal clear already, Get Chromed—like its chrome lobster—is a bizarre organism of an album, that sort of feels like it was grown diligently in a basement under blacklight. It's half-angular, anxious krautrock-inspired punk reminiscent of bands à la DEVO, and half-guitar odyssey. But, where DEVO served coldness, Get Chromed—with track names like "Digested Mouse" and "Sewer Tour Meat Computer"—serves something warmer, grungier, and more psychedelic, like that fungus growing in the abandoned bathrooms of my countryside Japanese train station. It's the kind of music that pays homage while also showing how far technology has come in the... *checks notes*... has it really been 45 years since the 1980s? Holy cow. Anyway, there's a clear evolution from the angelically beautiful but isolating synths of the 1980s and the synthesizer Chewy Lucas uses. Or maybe it's the guitars (probably it's those killer crunchy guitars).

Song By Song Breakdown

Including the previously discussed "Hidden Track," Get Chromed has 12 songs in its sound-dense, anxious-yet-glittery lineup. With "Camera," Chewy Lucas cracks the album open like a broken security feed looping over and over itself. There's only one lyric, repeated in frantic repetition: "Let me show you how I talk to the camera." The chrome jumpsuits and metal spikes the band members sway like robots to in the song's music video suggest a cheeky self-awareness of their influences and the ridiculousness of most of their music. The album is both deeply political and dripping with a teenage-boy-esque love of filth and low-brow humor, which I can totally vibe with. Halfway through, the song goes off its meds and starts ping-ponging before the main riff mutates into something frantic. It's a powerful opening to the album, with a... dare I say, slightly surf-rock influence to it?

Now, I want to discuss the next three songs—"Bastard System," "Digested Mouse," and "Sewer Tour Meat Computer"—in tandem because I feel they're connected to the core of the album's political commentary. The CGI-heavy, sci-fi music video of "Bastard System" features that beloved chrome lobster from the album's cover parading alongside metallic dinosaurs, silver aliens, and a massive tin-foil monolith god. This track is certainly more approachable than the opening, and I bet it's many people's favorite with the smooth vocal work and the (compared to the rest of the album) fewer experimental risks. For me, though, I appreciate the risks; not exactly a misstep, but something palate-cleansing before the plunge into the weirdcore world of Get Chromed. This song, however, establishes that politics are unfair and that the current era feels like it's "moving backwards" instead of forwards. Any hope for subtlety curdles with the dense lyrical poetry of "Digested Mouse," which, by the way, opens to what I can only imagine a mouse being digested must sound like when translated to the synthesizer. The sludge melts away to a twitchy beat with lyrics that frame corruption as self-perpetuated and deeply systemic. The guitar jitters, bouncing back and forth with a seesaw effect that feels like it's trying to escape the matrix to no avail. Vocally, it's very reminiscent of Mark Mothersbaugh's mechanical and desperate vocal cries in "Going Under." So, what happens to people affected by a corrupt "bastard system"? "Sewer Tour Meat Computer" answers this, bringing to mind the post-apocalyptic short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, with the lyrics "I'm trying to bring you to my meat computer / I want to see you peel." In other words, politics causes the average man to be chewed and spit up, only to be fed to the machine. It's an unending cycle, and there is no escape. At least the song itself is a vibe: feeling grungier with voice work that sounds like a sewer mutant struggling to open their mouth. Chef's kiss, truly. Something about the song (perhaps it's all the screaming) helps cement its point that we should all be uneasy about the massive machine we've signed away our lives to. 

Next up is "Finger Partition," whose grime-soaked guitars grind against blistering distortion while the vocals gasp for air. The lyrics felt half-buried in asphalt—too easily sucked into the guitar work for me to hear, at least, but the urgency is clear: something is desperate and wrong and trying to escape. Suddenly, the clouds lift, if only for a moment, into vocoder haze. I'll give Chewy Lucas one thing if nothing else: they know how to let songs breathe. This song illustrates it best, but regular songs mutate into different entities, speeding up or slowing down so as to not fatigue the listener. It's stellar pacing. 

After this is "Grotesque," which worms its way through to a crawl and lets the synths do the heavy lifting. The song seems to be an ode to technological control on modern attention spans with the sorrowful plea, “I want to be without distractions staring out my brain,” played over some rather meandering synths. Like most Chewy Lucas songs, however, the chorus breaks away into something wholly new for the bridge, sounding briefly almost like a new song altogether.

"Justice for None" isn’t a song as much as it is an interlude. There’s a lot of inaudible dialogue interspaced with cussing, ending on the neo-Marco-Polo masterpiece of “Bitch!” and “Brah?” 

"Kelpo" follows, which is, as far as Google Sensei will reveal to me, named for the spoof cereal brand in SpongeBob. The song is rather short, but I think it’s my favorite just for the nostalgic whiplash of questionable internet sales with “I'm gonna steal your tooth / I'm gonna steal and I'll sell it on Craigslist.” The synth work here is divine, with a bridge that allows the listener some room to breathe once more and vibe with the stellar sparkly synths that remind me of a Mario water level. Meanwhile, on the bridge, someone mumbles in Latin about—apparently, according to Google Translate—being milked on a table. I mean, different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

If you're a fan of 70s rock, you'll probably like "Crop Hospital," which feels less post-punk than the preceding songs and more heavy on the drum work. Once again, there's a deep mistrust of the system throughout this song. Lyrics discuss the public's constant political amnesia and the inability many have to escape the confines of a cloyingly toxic system. I think my only critique so far would be that—despite the insistence that there is a problem—it all comes across as very surface level. Still, I like it. Get Chromed is at least one more thing to dance into the apocalypse with. 

“Munchkin” is a pure chaos gremlin (or um, chaos "munchkin," I suppose). Though there are other lyrics, I found myself focusing on the spat-out phrase "I feel tall!" regularly belted out. Depending on your blood sugar levels, that's going to be either hilarious or a profound spiritual revelation. If I will it, can I become it? Your results may vary, but I believe so. By the end, the voice dissolves into raw screaming, and whether it's a tantrum or an anthem, it feels to me like something more. Commentary on the self-help mega-market, perhaps, but maybe I'm just reading too much into it. 

Second-to-last is the album's shapeshifter, "Neu," which feels like a spiritual successor to DEVO's "Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA." Like that song, it melts and meanders into several different beasts during the course of its playtime. In the beginning it's static, then sparkles, then wobbles. The guitars bite, the synths shimmer, and the entire song's structure regularly reforms before looping back on itself like a massive ouroboros. The phrase “Listening to Neu on the way home” cements for me that if DEVO wasn’t a direct influence, at least their 70s forefathers were.

Then there’s "Hidden Track," which I’ve already discussed: a masterpiece in the opposite of subtlety. Buzzy, quiet static followed by massive applause and “fuck you.”

Well, fuck you, too, Chewy Lucas, you beautiful bastards. This is one hell of an album!

Conclusions

Obviously, I don’t need to be convinced further. This is easily among my top favorite musical finds of the year. If any of this chrome-coated guitarwork struck a nerve with you, please consider visiting Bandcamp and supporting the album (Get Chromed | Chewy Lucas). It’s only $7, which is like, a lot cheaper than most things in This Economy™. At the time of writing this, it looks like there’s also physical CDs to be looted, which, if I wasn’t in Japan, would certainly be being added to my cart. Art like this survives only when people choose to sustain it, so please consider doing so. Now, if you don’t mind me, I’m going to be diving back into the bins on Discogs and Bandcamp. Until next time, thanks for stopping by!