Born in Norwich’s outsider ecosystem and sharpened in London’s restless sprawl, Chest carry the energy of a group who never learned to colour inside the lines because no one ever handed them the colouring book in the first place. The five‑piece have carved out a sound that refuses to sit still, refuses to behave, and refuses to be anything other than exactly what they want to hear. “We take elements from across genres and come out with something that is very hard to put your finger on,” they tell us. “We make the music we want to hear which is normally high energy, introspective and diverse with pop sensibilities.”
Photo Credits: Demi Hopkins
Chest are a band built on contradictions – chaos and control, humour and heaviness, vulnerability and bravado – and the emotional architecture of the group is as vivid as their sound. When asked to map out the internal ecosystem, they don’t hesitate:
“Will is the dad of the band.”
“Stan is the talent.”
“Russell is the funny younger cousin.”
“Joel is the diva.”
“Teo is the softy with a tough exterior.”
It’s a family dynamic, but one forged in the strange, fertile soil of Norwich: a city they credit with shaping their ethos more than their sound. “Starting as a band in Norwich really trained us to make music without an audience or scene in mind and that’s something that’s never going to change,” they explain. “Everyone is very much in their own lane and has their own very strong identities, so for us what lives on from that period is the ethos rather than sonic influence.
Photo Credits: Demi Hopkins
That ethos – independence, oddball confidence, a refusal to chase trends – bleeds into their new EP, a project that ricochets between panic, numbness, ego spirals, and digital claustrophobia. But these weren’t themes they set out to engineer.
“Lyrically, the songs portray a hyperbolised version of Joel and his mental state at the time of writing,” they say. “On tracks like GOSPEL and MACHINE, we adopted a technique of looking inward, identifying insecurities, magnifying them, and pushing them toward their destructive logical conclusions. The songs came naturally rather than setting out to write a commentary.”
Still, the EP isn’t all hyperbole. Its emotional centre of gravity is JULIA, a track Joel describes as the most personal he’s ever written.
“It felt important to also include something raw on the EP to counterweight a lot of the other hyperbolic character‑driven tracks,” he says. “The song is very sensitive and personal so it forced me to come to it from a place of vulnerability and honesty with no alterations which isn’t something I always do in my writing.”
Chest’s influences are as scattered and surprising as their emotional palette – and proudly so. “The band doesn’t really have any core influences collectively,” they admit. “Our drummer has a love of Nu‑metal while our front man is going through a Celine Dion phase at the moment. All our tracks are snapshots of our own musical palettes at the time of writing and recording.”
This eclecticism becomes especially sharp on MACHINE and GOSPEL, two tracks that feel like dispatches from inside the algorithm – frantic, glitching, desperate to keep up. “It’s the idea that the ‘Machine is always on’ which is the most suffocating,” they say. “Whether you’re tuned in or not it is continuing on at a breakneck speed… It draws you in and demands your attention and tells you the lie that if you don’t you’re going to be falling behind.”
When asked about their live sound compared to the studio, the Chest promise it’s going to be even more unhinged. “In a live room you can sense the mania and desperation in a lot of the tracks in a really vivid tactile way. There is a whole extra dimension to the communication in the tracks that make them feel so much larger in the room.”
Photo Credits: Demi Hopkins
With shows at The Elephant’s Head and Norwich Arts Centre marking the EP’s release, the band are already looking toward whatever comes next – though they’re not pretending to know what that is.
“Who knows but we’re not stopping here,” they say. “We want to play in a room for as many people as we can so wherever that takes us, we will see.”
Chest are a band in motion. Not toward a genre, not toward a scene, but toward a feeling they haven’t fully articulated yet. That’s the thrill. They’re chasing something raw, chaotic, and defiantly honest, and they’re doing it with the confidence of a group who learned early on that the only audience worth pleasing is the one inside the room with them.
NEVER REALLY HERE OUT NOW.
Words by
Marie Müller, 2026.