Sean McLennan

“Punk is better than it has ever been. The bands are incredible. The labels are amazing. Worldwide, DIY networks are still being set up and maintained by the people that believe in it and want to make things happen.” 

That’s where Josh Nickel, vocalist of Vancouver, BC hardcore/punk band Chain Whip, stands in regard to the ever-elusive state of punk music. Referring to his specific music surroundings of Vancouver, Nickel loves the DIY scene there.  

“It’s run by weirdos and they barely think we are cool enough to participate,” he says, an aspect of the community which he perceives as “perfect.” 

Chain Whip formed in late 2017, with the intention to write songs inspired by KBD compilations, California beach punk, and other local, grimy punk acts.  

“Chain Whip formed out of a Halloween cover band with a slightly different lineup,” Nickel says. “We were covering old California punk rock under the name Haunted (danger) House and wanted to keep on playing that style of stuff but write our own songs.” 

Having been involved in a few different musical projects in the past, the members that make up Chain Whip are “not completely one-dimensional,” says Nickel.  

“I’ll always be a punk, but we’ve played other music,” he explains. “Patrick and I were both playing in power pop bands before this, and Brett played in a few punk projects locally, while Joel was in Nervous Talk. None of those bands were close in style to what we’re doing here, but this is all a style we’ve been into forever. I remember the focus at the beginning was to be fast but maintain the songwriting of bands like Adolescents or Germs.” 

To Nickel, “Chain Whip just felt very natural.” The band began transmitting their raw punk assault through their first demo (2017), and again through their self-titled EP (2018). In 2019, the band put out their debut full-length album 14 Lashes (Chain Whip Records/Drunken Sailor Records), and their sound became noticeably faster, tighter, and more infectious.  

Now, the band has recorded their most inflamed and in-your-face material yet, with Two Step To Hell. The recording was released earlier this summer, with vinyl pressings in Canada and the U.S. available through Neon Taste Records and in the U.K. and Europe through Drunken Sailor Records.  

Leading up to Chain Whip’s Two Step To Hell, “we just got tighter as a band and were able to push the speed notch up a bit without losing the songwriting,” Nickel says.  

“Two Step To Hell was a bit different, in that we focused on exactly what we wanted to accomplish.” 

Nickel mentions that Two Step To Hell is best represented by the first verse in the self-titled track: “Living in collapse, what a place to be. Trigger-finger living on live TV. We’re all living in our own vacuum, our echo chamber’s gonna be our tomb.” 

“I wrote that after the Christchurch terror attack and my mom getting Q-Anoned,” Nickel states. “I was angry, I was sad. You can feel really helpless being surrounded by terrible news all the time. When people that you are close to end up getting taken for a ride, it sucks. I was just pissed and writing about working in an overdose epidemic and finding people dead that I cared about. I don’t think it was an intentionally angry or nihilistic record, just circumstance.” 

“I was admittedly a little worried about writing a record after 14 Lashes, because people liked it a lot and I didn’t want to bum anyone out with something that wasn’t of similar quality,” he says. “I’m proud of this record and would have been if people hated it. It’s just nice to know we didn’t bum anyone out with a crappy follow up.” 

Listen to Two Step To Hell here:

For more from Chain Whip, find them on Bandcamp.