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Photo Credit: Justin Singer
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“Children” leads off Chastity’s debut album, Death Lust, with a guitar tone that swims through concrete walls like liquefied stone. This is the kind of monotonic and massive riff that commands a legion to the front of the stage, raging in slow motion, as Williams coos over the beautiful bombast.” – NPR
Chastity (aka Brandon Williams) has released the politically charged video for “Children,” taken from the upcoming album Death Lust, to be released Friday, July 13th via Captured Tracks.
NPR premiered the powerful video for the song, saying “‘Children’ channels the outrage of a community into a beautifully shot video that spotlights both the vulnerability and the solidarity of youth.” The video is centered around an incident and events that followed in Williams home town of Whitby. An off-duty police officer named Michael Theriualt and his brother allegedly beat a young black man, Dafonte Miller, with a steel pipe while he was walking near his home which left the victim blind in one eye.
Speaking on the origin of and inspiration for the Justin Singer-directed clip, Williams (who wrote, cast and produced the video) reveals that “This is a close up on the practice of institutional racism that’s revealed itself in my hometown by members of the police. John, Christian and Michael Theriault, Toronto and Durham police are a threat to public safety. Black Lives Matter. How much do black lives matter to police?“
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Chastity is a world of its own from the mind of Brandon Williams. Reflecting the working class background of Whitby, Ontario, Chastity’s songs are charged with the ethos of archetypal youth on the fringe. A project more aptly characterized by its intentions than specific sound or medium, Chastity stands to confront the struggles of those existing in the unseen, often silenced periphery. It is an artifact of youth culture constantly working to form community, bridging isolation with collectivity.
Visuals play a meaningful role in this world with Williams using his penchant for crafting consistently sharp, challenging imagery to personalize the narratives running throughout all of Chastity’s work – most discernibly, a call for the disruption of harmful status quo.
It was clear from the release of Chastity’s first demos that this was not “another punk band that can operate at only one speed.” Always concerned with the trending lack of accessibility and inclusivity in public spaces for the arts, the first Chastity show was held in Williams’ own bedroom where, packed wall-to-wall, the police were quickly called. But after the project’s second show supporting DC punk band Priests, Chastity was off to the races, sharing stages with the likes of with Metz, Chelsea Wolfe and Fucked Up. All without a full length recording out.
Since signing with Brooklyn label Captured Tracks, Chastity has re-released those initial demos, along with 2 new singles and an EP, stoking the anticipation of Chastity’s debut full length record, Death Lust.
Releasing Friday the 13th of July, 2018, Death Lust follows the plot of suffering to survival. The album begins on a tortured note with ‘Come’ and builds toward the plummeting finale of ‘Chains’, evolving from start to finish in a crescendo of severity. Chastity explains, “Death Lust is about growing up death obsessed. It’s about the pain that it takes but the capacity that we have to overcome.”
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