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Carnival finds the Fort Worth's Trauma Ray capturing some of their strongest, most intense, and exploratory work within the boundaries of a whirlwind year. The breakout success of Chameleon, their 2024 debut on Dais Records, further established the band amidst the current wave of shoegaze revivalists, yet increasingly agile, able to weave between scenes, touring throughout 2025 with the likes of Deafheaven, Loathe, and Touche´ Amore´. A confluence of blitzing riffs and stark beauty, their sound continues to evolve, nodding to loud-quiet-loud greats across metal, grunge, and shoegaze from Slowdive to Smashing Pumpkins. Carnival delves into moodier, more cerebral material, like holding their past excursions against a funhouse mirror. There's a distinct sense of unease in these songs, built as a band in a fleeting window of time, proving they work best under pressure and when pulling from the darkest corners of their subconscious. The wordless InchCarouselInch ushers in the EP's unsettling atmosphere with blasts of static and downcast strums giving way to InchHannibalInch, an anthemic track packed with power riffs and raw emotion. The band has hit this kind of sheer power before, from 2018's InchSolsticeInch to Chameleon's title track, while InchHannibalInch contorts with a tinge of unprecedented evil, slithery, InchStone Temple-y, Alice in Chains-y,Inch Avila quips. Lyrically, he taps into teenage angst, the feeling of being dissected and rejected. InchMélièsInch, named after the French illusionist and filmmaker cuts between heavy, sludgy chords and a skyward chorus, Inchfrom something scary to like a dream state,Inch says Avila, who channels the namesake's surreal abstraction. His lines detail, Inchbeing stuck in your head and just making up realities that probably aren't the real thing going on, when you don't want to face the truth.Inch InchFunhouseInch dips into doo
