What shakes Split Chain most? Success. And the torturous wait for it.
It’s early February, and the guys have just returned home to Bristol, England, after wrapping their first-ever U.S. tour, supporting Silverstein and Thursday. Now, with the road behind them and the release of their debut album, motionblur, just months away, they’re stuck in an agonizing purgatory before their music finally reaches the world.
As one of the fastest-rising acts in the nu-gaze scene — and the clear standouts in a crowded market of post-Deftones bands wearing their heavy influences on their baggy long-sleeves — the anticipation is monumental. But the five members of Split Chain aren’t concerned that motionblur will fall short of expectations. Their real fear? That it’ll launch them into something much bigger.
So, what happens if motionblur actually takes off?
“Oh, fuck,” groans lead singer Roberto Martinez-Cowles (who goes by Bert), immediately covering his eyes with his hands.
Bassist Tom Davies jumps in. “There are people who’ve listened to the album and said, ‘This is really fucking good,’ and I’m like, well, I kind of don’t want it to be that good,” he admits. “I’ve already gone from never playing a show before to touring in America in a year and a half. So, I can’t think about it too much.”
Within their short existence, Split Chain’s rise has already surpassed anything they imagined — and they’re only just getting started. Since forming in 2023, the band have amassed nearly 200,000 monthly Spotify listeners off the strength of just a few singles, including their heavy, melancholic breakout “Future,” their Softcult collab, “(Re)-Extract,” and an infectious cover of Type O Negative’s “I Don’t Wanna Be Me.” They’ve experienced some viral success on TikTok and built a dedicated fanbase on Reddit’s metal-adject forums, where users share Split Chain tracks with gushing endorsements: Trust me, you’ll wanna hear this. It’s not hard to see why — the band is an irresistible sell.
Along the way, they’ve shared stages with Superheaven, Amira Elfeky and GEL, and are set to play Spain’s Resurrection Fest and the U.K.’s Download Festival later this year.
On February 18th, just one week before our conversation, they headlined their first show in New York City — a place none of them had ever been to before. The gig was sold out, sweaty and rhapsodic. It was proof that their digital success had transferred over to the real. motionblur is the next major step in their ascent, a record that distills their freshened-up Y2K alt-metal and emo influences into 11 songs that serve as both a culmination of their journey and a new high-water mark for the nu-gaze movement.
Shaped by their teenage obsessions — Tony Hawk’s video games, Bam Margera’s pre-Jackass series CKY, WWE, Superheaven and Deftones — Split Chain are drip-feeding nostalgia to fans who grew up on that same aesthetic, while revitalizing everything that made it so compelling in the first place.
“I guess, subconsciously with our music, we’re reliving the best times of our lives,” says Martinez-Cowles, “when we were first getting into alternative lifestyles and there was no responsibility.”
“Those days were all about just having fun,” adds Davies. “But then you get to a certain age and everything starts to suck — so you go to alcohol to cope.”
Split Chain was formed shortly after Davies’ last-ever hangover. His drinking had been on a steady incline, and the pandemic only exacerbated the habit. He skipped meals and stopped taking care of himself entirely. “All my money, focus and energy would go towards drinking,” he says. “I was becoming a pretty horrible person to be around.”
The breaking point came one fateful, hungover morning when Davies was working at his call center job — and broke down crying while on the phone with a customer. His boss encouraged him to go home, take care of himself and get sober.
Martinez-Cowles went straight to Davies’ house when he heard the news. They spent the afternoon idling, not quite sure what to do with themselves. “When you quit drinking, you find you have a lot of time on your hands,” says Davies. Luckily, boredom is a fantastic catalyst for creativity. So, they picked up a guitar and a bass —because fuck it, why not? — and started jamming. No agenda. No expectations. The pair played the kind of music they knew instinctively: the alt, punk and rock songs you’d hear in Pro Skater 4 or Crazy Taxi. They ended up writing a song. One song turned into two. Then three. Then more.
Guitarists Oli Bowles and Jake Reid and drummer Aaron Black joined soon after, and with whatever bit of extra cash they had, they hit the studio. “We were like, ‘Oh this sounds pretty good,’” says Martinez-Cowles. With new momentum, they got serious: refining their look and branding, and weaving social media trends into their strategy. It worked. Suddenly, Split Chain weren’t just jamming in their home — they were a band. And they had an audience keen to hear more.
Last September, they signed with iconic label Epitaph Records. The shift was jarring. In just a few months, they’d gone from making music for the sheer hell of it to the daunting task of crafting a full-length album. “The songs we’d previously written came from such a natural place, it was like we didn’t even have to try,” says Martinez-Cowles. “But with the album there was so much pressure. We weren’t just writing music for ourselves anymore — we were doing it for our fans.”
In the studio, they quickly learned that writing under that kind of pressure caused them to clam up. “Because it was our first time, it was really overwhelming,” says Davies. So, they tried to recreate the loose, no-stakes environment of their earliest jam sessions. They noodled around, got some riffs going, and when everything clicked into place they hit record.
Still, the much larger creative window invited more opportunity for self-doubt. “A lot of it was trying to be calm and not battle with yourself,” says Martinez-Cowles. “There was a lot of, ‘I can’t do it, I’m not good enough,’ and feeling like an impostor — like we didn’t deserve this because we came up so quickly.”
Eventually, they forced themselves into blind faith, using the album as a vessel to exorcise those anxieties. What emerged was something that exceeded every one of their expectations: a diverse range of sounds folded into one cohesive frame. Each song, in some way, serves as a manifestation and mandate for the band to transgress dead-ended chains of pain.
On “bored. tired. torn,” Martinez-Cowles revisits his childhood home, where “better days were far away,” using the song as an opportunity to yell out everything he couldn’t before. Likewise, on “my mistake…,” he muses on cycles of intergenerational trauma, freeing himself from the hurt — while briefly living through it one final time.
“Even if this is all a super quick burnout, I will still be able to look back on it with pride,” says Davies of the band’s experience making motionblur. “This is something we did together, that helped us realize that we’re all far more capable than we gave ourselves credit for in the past.”
Sober, focused, seasoned — and with a defining album on the horizon — Split Chain are at the threshold of something huge.
But for now, all they can do is wait.