Shirking the warnings of Fleetwood Mac, Bristol band Split Chain are “breaking the chain” and pioneering a new genre with the release of their debut album, motionblur. The group describe themselves as “Dreamo” or “Nu-Gaze,” combining elements of Nu-Metal, Shoegaze, Post-Hardcore, and Emo to create a sound that’s equal parts heavy and weightless.
Bassist Tom Davies and guitarist Oli Bowles sat down with New Noise to discuss the creation of the album and their rapid rise to fame.
“To us, we are still just a bunch of mates, so… the fact that we’re thrown into these crazy awesome opportunities and… [have] people come up to us [saying] ‘Oh my God, I’m a massive fan’ [will] never really sink in,” Bowles muses.
The group formed in 2023, but the band came together from a set of long-standing friendships that later became a path to sobriety – and in some senses, a chain reaction. “I’ve known [guitarist] Jake [Reid] for 19 years or something stupid,” Davies says, while the others met in university and nights out.
When Davies began his path to sobriety, singer Bert Martinez-Cowles used the band to help him forward. Bowles in turn says “Tom was a big inspiration for me to go sober…I had a real rough time with…a breakup and I’ve never been so low in my life. I remember a doctor told me to cut back on drinking and Tom was like, ‘Oh, I’m a year sober.’ And I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna try what Tom did. Because if he can do it, I can probably do it as well.’ So yeah, if I can do it, you can.”
Despite being a debut album, motionblur serves as a kind of retrospective for Split Chain’s members. “It’s an amalgamation of both the positive and the negative that we’ve all been through,” Davies explains. “You’ve got the positive stuff in terms of looking back on our childhoods, [skating and] MTV culture, PlayStation, whatever. But then you’ve gotta mix that with the bad…And now [we’re looking] at who we are having gone through all of that and [we] appreciate every single aspect of that,” he continues.
Even Split Chain’s visuals are bathed in this sense of melancholic nostalgia, with every cover and curated social media post basking in the band’s signature shade of blue. Though now the group’s defining look, Davies notes that they stumbled upon it haphazardly while Martinez-Cowles was color grading their first music video, “Get Inside.” “It was a little bit of a happy accident…I guess that’s a metaphor for the band,” Davies muses.
Bowles demystifies the origin of the album’s title, explaining that “We didn’t have an album name until after it was all completely done, so it’s not like we were writing to a specific theme or anything. We were just writing [about] how we felt at the time, and the title we came up with being motionblur kind of captures that.” Split Chain truly is a whirlwind, mixing good chemistry, fond memories, and a strong set of shared experiences of past trauma mixed with present success.
Though Split Chain’s popularity has recently skyrocketed, Davies and Bowles are truly passionate about making music that resonates with listeners. “I think it’s the authenticity of our lived experiences that help with that,” Davies reasons. “If people are able to hearken or relate to [music] themselves, then they’re gonna form that emotional connection. Then that’s only gonna, as a consequence, help us move forward in our careers. But it’s cool because it is who we are authentically. That’s who we were as kids, as teenagers, and it’s who we are now. We are still little skate rats,” he chuckles.
Skate rats maybe, but certainly ones who have gone through all manner of struggles that ultimately served as inspiration for motionblur’s earnest intensity. Split Chain had better not split up any time soon – they’re just beginning to embrace their capacity to link people together.
motionblur is out tomorrow and you can pre-order it from Epitaph Records. Follow Split Chain on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for future updates.
Photo Credit: Ashlea Bea
