“Take That Back” by Kanti Chant

Thick, heavy, menacing; there’s no other way to describe the riffing you’re going to hear in the new single “Take That Back” from Kanti Chant, which I’d rank as one of the hard-hitting songs of its kind released in the past couple of months. Kanti Chant assaults us with melodic fuzz of the most vicious quality in this performance, but she isn’t reliant on the decadence of an overdriven riff to win our affections, either. In a time that has been especially unkind to hard rock and the notion of indulgence, this is a player showing the world how to be tasteful with excess. 

SOUNDCLOUD: https://soundcloud.com/kantichant

Kanti Chant’s vocal delivery matches the guitar prowess she’s coupled with here excellently, and I would even say that it would be difficult to exploit the mood of the narrative as much as she does with a different singer holding the microphone. She’s got some angst in the story she’s telling, but she isn’t letting it manifest in a whiny, predictably plastic vocal execution, nor a weakened framework around her. The sonic depth of this piece is a priority, and you don’t have to be an expert critic to recognize that here. 

This beat isn’t nearly as big as it should be given the parameters of the harmony Kanti Chant is drawing up in the chorus, but I get the feeling this is deliberate on her part. She isn’t trying to fill the backdrop with a lot of intense drumming; she wants us getting lost in the distorted white noise she’s shaping into melodicism in “Take That Back,” which takes a bit more attention to detail than a lot of her competition possess. There’s no shortchanging us with oversized grooves in place of melodic charm here, which is refreshing for someone who follows rock and metal contemporarily. 

The way “Take That Back” was mixed puts all of the tension in Kanti Chant’s singing as well as the instrumental faceting at the center of the track, which forces her to really push herself as a vocalist in an effort to keep up with the blistering undertow of the band. This isn’t an artist who is afraid to get her hands dirty – contrarily, I think it’s obvious that she prefers getting experimental in the studio likely as a means of establishing her feelings, her identity, and really her music in general as her own and no one else’s. 

“Take That Back” offers us a really promising look for the young up and comer Kanti Chant, and her exhibition of strength is something we could use a lot more of in the rock n’ roll genre right now and in the future. Rock needs a lot more female voices who don’t fit into the stereotypical ‘girl rocker’ aesthetic, and by letting her artistic versatility point her in the direction of something wholly alternative to what the mainstream is doing in any capacity right now, Kanti Chant asserts herself as being one of the more important players to keep on your radar this fall. 

Mindy McCall