No chance to grab the chance that submits to you.
What good’s a house when you’re in debt on your room?
Clutching straws in hopes economies boom.
Pipe dream’s seeming so sad.
In No Chance, Lachlan P. Rother, operating under the moniker Ohms, channels a quiet, surgical rage – rather than shouting into the void, this song is a carefully measured diagnosis of the void itself. Here, the Melbourne-based songwriter, known for his work in U-Bahn, GLASNOST, and High Control Group, dissects the economics of despair with the precision of an engineer and the fatalism of a poet.
No Chance’s structure feels like a report written from within the machinery it critiques. Its jagged rhythm and icy synths conjure the sterile hum of screens and fluorescent offices. Guitar lines move like stock tickers, nervous, angular, and exacting; while a Motorik pulse simulates the repetitive cadence of the commute and the clock. It’s gothic not in aesthetic indulgence, but in its architecture: the beauty of decay rendered in mechanical order.
Rother’s lyrics evoke the spiritual exhaustion of youth consigned to a system designed to extract, not sustain. His verses catalogue the rituals of scarcity: rent, debt, the hollow incentive of “opportunity,” with the dry authority of an audit. Yet there’s a strange tenderness beneath the cynicism, however, as if the act of articulation itself is a small rebellion. The recurring image of the “brass ring” becomes more than a metaphor for ambition; it’s a relic of a faith long lost, a carousel turning on an axis of futility.
The track’s pacing mirrors the disjointed rhythm of modern attention: fragments of melody flash by like headlines, half-digested and already forgotten. Then, mid-song, comes a shift…an uncanny bridge that feels like a carnival spinning out of control. The bass wobbles, synths shimmer into discord, and for a moment, the song teeters. It’s a masterstroke of tension, a sonic depiction of a world where economic systems and human nerves fray in parallel.
Mikey Young’s mastering lends the piece a cold, metallic sheen, fitting for a song that thrives in austerity. Channeling Devo, XTC, Sparks, and Heaven 17, Rother pens a document of unease rendered with elegance and restraint: bleak, articulate, and quietly damning.
In a world choking on optimism, No Chance feels refreshingly honest. It doesn’t promise salvation. It merely tells the truth.
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