Track-by-Track: Chore Stroll Through Their Album ‘Oswego Park’

For Canadian fans of post-hardcore, it came as a welcome development when news came out this past summer that Chore was working on new music. The Dunnville, Ontario band had a strong run of success in the late 1990s and early 2000s thanks to their three highly regarded studio albums. But unfortunately, the band disbanded in 2004 to pursue other projects and interests. Then, suddenly in the summer of 2024, Chore reformed, seemingly out of nowhere, for a one-off performance as part of a friend’s birthday party that took place at The Casbah in Hamilton, Ontario. The momentum from that performance carried forward, and suddenly the band was active again.

The fourth proper Chore album, Oswego Park, was released on September 5th via Sonic Unyon Records. The record features plenty of stellar moments of punishing math metal and alternative rock. The album has actually been in the works for some time. It was recorded intermittently between 2017 and 2022, but it wasn’t until recently that they decided it was the right time to release it. The album title is a reference to a subdivision between Dunnville and Smithville, Ontario, a small town that was important to the band members growing up. While they have no plans to return to being a full-time touring act, the band members feel like Oswego Park is the record they were always trying to make.

Today, we are joined by Chris Bell and Mike Bell for an exclusive Track-by-Track rundown of Oswego Park, sharing with us the story behind the writing of this stellar new record.

1. “King”

Chris Bell: “Inspired by the negativity that can be haphazardly thrown around, hiding in plain sight, on social media. People feel pressured to portray themselves as something other than who they really are and how they really feel, constantly expressing a false narrative just to feel watched, grasping at any little nugget of feedback from the ether. Mental health is at an all-time low because of this new ‘I’m on stage all the time’ behaviour that everyone thinks is required.”

2. “The Carcassist”

Mike Bell: “Written very early in our resurgence. After our first jam, Chris felt so inspired that I’m pretty sure he came to the second practice with the music for this song almost completed. We had a great time picking out some random numbers for riff cycling when arranging the middle section, our classic ‘Chore math’ technique of throwing some random numbers up in the air and then playing them however they landed. As we worked on it and refined it, Dave was always saying, ‘This feels like classic Chore,’ strictly as a compliment. The newfound melodic sophistication of Dave’s aggressive vocal style also shines very brightly on ‘The Carcassist.’”

3. “Cowards Can”

Chris Bell: “Written during/near the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The divisive nature of strong belief systems really shines through when people are told they must do something new, that they weren’t expecting. People getting loud and proud for conspiratorial reasons, but really just wanting to be able to go out and buy shiny things that end up in the garbage, and eat garbage that turns into shit, at a self-dictated pace.

“There was almost nothing more important, once the economy was shut down, than getting everyone back out there again to keep building that debt. Unfortunately, the poorest and most impressionable were the first ones in line at Applebee’s for half-priced apps when the balloons fell.”

4. “Canary”

Chris Bell: “Written about one’s inability to step outside themselves and view something from someone else’s perspective. In this case, the reference is seeing a situation from the perspective of a bird, safely in a cage as a pet, or a bird in the wild that’s free and constantly in danger.”

5. “The Invisible College”

Chris Bell: “Written about two Indigenous women, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, who went missing and had been murdered, bodies known to be dumped in a Winnipeg landfill. The provincial government of Manitoba, at the time, chose not to search for their bodies due to the cost involved, but cited health risks to those searching. I followed this story very closely in the media. The outgoing premier actually used the refusal to search as a campaign promise of health and safety. They lost the campaign, and the new government resumed the search, finding the bodies of the two women who had been victims of a serial killer.

“As a father with a daughter, this story struck a chord with me immediately, but it also draws attention to the historical plight that Indigenous people struggle with on an ongoing basis.”

6. “Witch Uncle”

Mike Bell: “I was determined to make lightning strike twice after the revelation of making ‘Meth Grad’ (see ‘Meth Grad’ description below). Once again, I sent Dave (Dunham) three bass riffs, basically strung together. I’ll confess that I was trying to channel Buzz Osborne of Melvins on this one. So much so that I sent it to Dave with the working title of ‘Shitty Buzz-o.’ Once Dave took my little riffs into his lab and sent them back to me, the first riff remained intact as the main theme, but the other two ideas had been deconstructed beyond recognition, and the time signature he had come up with for the verses made me dizzy.

“Vocally, Dave has always been the ‘holler’ guy, but he’s singing a bunch on this record, and we can even hear Mitch (Bowden) harmonizing with him on this one in the middle section, which was another moment that had me jumping for joy on the first listen. The Chore fans looking for the heavier and more unhinged side of our sound will gravitate toward this one.”

Chore Stroll ‘Oswego Park’ album artwork

7. “Suggestion”

Mike Bell: “As we were coming to the end of the writing process, Dave was encouraging me to get him one more stream of bass riffs that he could play with and build something from. I wanted to have something with ‘big hits’ in it. Not chart-topping melodies, but big hits that the band would punctuate together, with very odd and seemingly random measures of time between the hits. Sort of a Meshuggah trick that I was trying to learn.

“One might hear what I mean during the song’s intro, but then Dave’s arrangement took it into the craziest, most mathematically complex place we’ve ever been to as a band. I spent weeks learning how to play his arrangement before I had to cut it in the studio. It was daunting, and I joked that we should just cheat and put the sequenced demo on the record, but I got there.”

8. “Beware and the Obeyers”

Mike Bell: “The main riff for this came up the old-fashioned way, in the practice room. One day, way back in 2017, Dave and I were having a two-man jam. Chris was busy with Wintersleep at the time, so I was just bluntly hammering on a guitar. The riff that anchors the second half of the song dates to the Take My Mask and Breathe era, as it appeared in an early draft of a song called ‘Aura Rhanes.’ I’d always kept it in mind and took this opportunity to dig it up, and it worked.

“Honestly, I kept forgetting about this song as we continued to write the album and thought of it as a throwaway. It almost didn’t make the final cut, but whenever Dave puts his vocals on something that I might think is ‘good enough,’ it always becomes ‘most excellent,’ and Chris got creatively dissonant on his guitar parts with his much more refined technique. Now it’s a standout track for me.”

9. “Meth Grad”

Mike Bell: “‘Meth Grad’ was a huge ‘EUREKA’ moment for me. To start, I just emailed three distinct bass riffs to Dave, all strung together very simply. A week or so later, we had a completed demo for a pretty heavy song that we’d all written together, but entirely remotely. I was listening in my car to what Dave and Chris had done with my three little riffs, and I was totally freaking out. It was the first song that we built together completely remotely like that.

“This was also the first time I ‘wrote’ for Chore strictly on bass guitar. I’ve always been trying to come up with ideas on the guitar without ever really considering the bass a writing instrument. This song finally got me out of that mindset.”

10. “Grave Race”

Chris Bell: “Written about the rural area of Ontario, Canada, where we grew up. Approximately 15 minutes outside of the town of Dunnville is a small neighbourhood of homes called Oswego Park. There is nothing there but a small, looping suburb of houses and a park with an expanse of grass, a parkette, and an unkept baseball diamond. Most of the kids who lived in Oswego Park went to the same single-hall rural elementary school as some of us, while the rest lived on expansive farm properties. There was one school bus that took everyone to and from OP, and it was overfilled to a fault. Arms and heads sticking out of windows, paper and insults flying throughout the chaotic yelling and screaming inside the bus.

“Usually, in the very back seat of this bus, leading the chaos was a student named Tim Smith. He was a big personality and enjoyed being the center of attention. I admired his bravado, being a younger student, but our encounters were generally unpleasant; he wasn’t friendly to those who weren’t in his immediate circle. I became disenchanted with him eventually, and once he and his generation of sixth graders moved up to junior high, I became unaware of his comings and goings.

“Later, in high school, Tim and some friends were in the gymnasium, sneakily playing ball hockey, unsupervised. The story, as I heard it, was that Tim was bodychecked against the gym wall and broke his neck. In the ensuing ambulance ride, he broke into convulsions and worsened his injury, leading to him becoming an incommunicative paraplegic. I believe he still lives in or near Oswego Park with his family.

“Years ago, Dave was driving near Oswego Park and passed a car with Tim in the backseat. It brought on conversations amongst us, memories of Tim and what had happened. These conversations and the childhood memories that they drummed up are what my lyrics in this song are centered around.”

“Lax Immolation”

Mike Bell: “‘Lax’ is extra special to me because that was the three of us, all throwing our own ideas together in the same room in real time, and coming out with a finished song, much like how we wrote most of our first two records. And it happened after a long stretch of inactivity, which gave it an extra jolt. I had a riff leftover from a failed songwriting attempt that worked well with the main riff that Dave had gotten us started on. Chris then came up with a great chord progression on the spot for the chorus. We demoed it in Dave’s basement and immediately sent it to Mitch Bowden, who surprised us with a beautiful vocal part for the chorus.

“Dave, Chris, and Mitch all take great turns on lead vocals here, which has never happened on a Chore song before. Once completed, we all quickly agreed that Lax had ‘epic’ enough of a feel to be the album’s finale.”