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Among the current wave of shoegaze revivalists, Fort Worth’s Trauma Ray rank as high as any at capturing its complexity, intensity, and expressive devastation. Since first making waves with a self-titled EP in 2018, the core songwriting duo of Uriel Avila and Jonathan Perez have expanded and refined the project’s vision and craft, culminating in their 12-track Dais debut, Chameleon. Rounded out by bassist Darren Baun, drummer Nicholas Bobotas, and guitarist Coleman Pruitt, the album both synthesizes and transcends its influences, a stormy fusion of downer hooks, apocalyptic beauty, and bulldozer riffs.
Lead single “Bishop” perfectly encapsulates Trauma Ray’s depth and dimension, ripping out of the gate with “the biggest, baddest, saddest wall of sound.” Lyrics about being burnt at the stake and “tossed in the flame” dance above a stop-start assault of precision distortion, eventually expanding into a lush, heavy, sorrowful end coda. As Perez puts it, “This song shows what the band can do.”
“Spectre” began as a one-off rehearsal demo – written quickly, played once, then never again. While building the track list for Chameleon, Bobotas re-discovered their practice recording in his archive of voice memos. A mysterious, introspective dirge, they envisioned it as a “mellow, slowcore, Duster thing,” all feeling and heavy fuzz chords with no lead guitar. Lyrically, Avila wrote it “to be like a hymnal,” from the perspective of someone who won’t let you go – an ex, a ghost, a shadow self.
Although Chameleon is rich with subtleties, graceful lulls, and “breaths of air,” the band’s three guitar attack is its defining force, a power flexed to its peak on “Bardo.” Perez’s intentions were blunt: “I wanted to write a riff that was hard as fuck.” The result is alternately mean and eerie, veering between noisy one string bends and surging headbang, mapping a middle ground between Unwound and nu-metal.
One of Trauma Ray’s greatest gifts is their ability to make doomy, sledgehammer heaviness sound like an earworm, without production tricks or gimmicks: “Riff, verse, chorus, three guitar parts – that’s all you need.” The result is the essence of what Perez wants for the band: “This is my favorite song to play live. In general I never want to do things in the studio that we can’t play live, although it always sounds better live because the guitars are louder.”
The name Trauma Ray was inspired by the German word for ‘daydream, or ‘dream state,’ in classic shoegaze fashion. Avila’s background in a devout Pentecostal community gives his lyrics about guilt, purgatory, and passing to the other side to an emotional authenticity that cuts through the music’s majestic volume.
This quality is particularly apparent on the title track, a churning slab of amplifier worship, swirling chords, and heavenly, defeated vocals about not belonging, shape-shifting, and death (“A twisted face / Void of attention / An empty space / In your reflection”). For Perez, it’s the pinnacle of the band’s chemistry: “Musically it’s the song that best captures our shared tastes – heavy, catchy, pretty, all at the same time. It’s my favorite chorus, favorite lyrics, favorite song on the album.”
Track by track, the band sifted through the voice memo demos drummer Nicholas Bobotas recorded at their bi-weekly practices, re-learning and refining the songs that felt most potent. Fortunately, the process was smooth, as among Avila’s many musical talents is the ability to discern the chords to a song by ear – even on a deafening, lo-fi, three-guitar demo.
Once the album was locked, veteran engineer Corey Coffman mixed the tracks at his studio in Colorado, using notes from the band. His CV speaks for itself, having worked with an impressive range of heavy alternative groups across the U.S., but Coffman’s particular specialty is drums, which have long been a challenge in music defined by loudness and density. “We’ve never been fully satisfied with the way the drums sound before,” Perez admits. “But Corey has a way of making them so real and raw, with that live energy. They don’t sound like glass, or fake, or drowned out.”
The result is a masterpiece of craft, balance, melody, lyricism, and gravity, flexing a fresh vision of loud-quiet-loud architectures and the vertigo depths of blasted harmonics. From Slowdive to Nothing to Hum and beyond, Trauma Ray absorb and expand on their influences, steadily carving their own terrain. Theirs is a rare and dedicated alchemy, which Perez acknowledges every time they play together: “None of us are taking any of this for granted. We’re so fortunate to be doing this thing that we all care so much about. As you get a little older, you realize that to get five people in the same room making music twice a week for six years straight is almost virtually impossible. To achieve what we’ve done is bewildering.”
Their live sets keep sharpening across increasingly adventurous American tours, stacking amps and turning heads show by show. With a busy performance schedule looming and new songs constantly germinating, Trauma Ray’s cinematic tempest is a gathering storm only just taking flight.