Vena Sera  (Audio CD) 
by Chevelle

Chevelle has been releasing solid, if not entirely original-sounding, albums for the better part of a decade now and Vena Sera serves as another pleasant but workaday entry in the band's still sparse oeuvre. The group's continued debt to Tool remains obvious on the hard-hitting opener "Antisaint" with its throbbing guitar work and from-the-gut vocals and can also be heard during the arena-ready stomp "The Fad." There are few surprises throughout, very little we haven't already heard from Chevelle and its contemporaries before: The pulsating, detuned riffs that populate the mosh-intensive "Humanoid" and the fairly pallid late-album arrival "Midnight to Midnight" (which could have been a serious radio contender circa 1999) share space with the uplifting guitar figures of the slightly pop-inflected "Brainiac" and the nearly anthemic "Well Enough Alone" to familiar but comforting effect. Still, lovers could do far worse than dive in and enjoy some workmanlike riffs delivered in an enthusiastic fashion that many of this band's imitators will never manage to muster. Vena Sera is decent through and through but hardly ever life-changing.––Jedd Beaudoin