Chokt

Lore & Background

Chokt formed after Pete Murray and John Stevens worked together in Ghost Machine, a band Murray produced. Following those sessions, Murray and Stevens continued collaborating and decided to form a new band with Walter Flakus of Stabbing Westward. The band began recording in 2005, pursuing an industrial rock sound reminiscent of Flakus's work in Stabbing Westward and Stevens's work in The Clay People. Murray used Chokt as an outlet for music that did not fit the traditional hard rock sound he aimed for with Lo-Pro.

The band members never worked in the same room together; instead, they used Pro-Tools and emailed parts back and forth. Murray performed vocals, while Flakus and Stevens both contributed guitar, bass, and programming, using a drum machine for drums. The band started streaming songs in 2006, debuting most on the band's Myspace, occasionally on Murray's Myspace. They released tracks periodically through 2009, ending with 'Only You' just before Murray became active with Lo-Pro again. In an interview for Lo-Pro, Murray stated his intentions to gain more exposure for Chokt, saying the band 'won't be secret for long.'

Reader's Guide

Chokt represents a brief but notable side project that allowed Pete Murray to explore an industrial rock sound outside the hard rock confines of Lo-Pro during a six-year recording hiatus. The band's method of remote collaboration via Pro-Tools and email, with members never in the same room, was ahead of its time for the mid-2000s. Their decision to release songs one by one over several years, primarily through Myspace, reflected the era's shift toward digital, non-album-based distribution. Though Chokt never released a full album or toured, the project produced eight known tracks and served as a creative outlet for three musicians from established rock acts. Murray's later statement that Chokt 'won't be secret for long' suggests he intended to pursue the project further, but the band ceased releasing tracks after 2009 when Lo-Pro resumed activity. Chokt remains a footnote in the careers of its members, illustrating how side projects can provide artistic freedom during periods of band inactivity.

Did You Know?

• The band released songs one by one from 2006 to 2009, mostly debuting on Myspace.
• Pete Murray used Chokt as an outlet for songs that did not fit the hard rock sound of Lo-Pro.
• Chokt's final track 'Only You' was released in 2009, just before Lo-Pro became active again.

Formation & Origins

Pete Murray's path to Chokt was shaped by a series of band transitions in the early 2000s. After fronting the nu metal project Ultraspank through two albums and its subsequent breakup, Murray teamed up with guitarist Neil Godfrey to form the hard rock band Lo-Pro, which put out a self-titled record in 2003. A Geffen deal followed, but the label split with the group after their supporting tour, leaving Murray in a six-year lull during which Lo-Pro searched for a new home while he continued writing and reworking material. It was in that interim that Murray crossed paths with Ivan Moody—who would later front Five Finger Death Punch—and John Stevens, a former guitarist in The Clay People, in the band Ghost Machine. Murray produced both of Ghost Machine's albums, Ghost Machine and Hypersensitive. When those sessions wrapped, Murray and Stevens kept collaborating outside the project, and together with Walter Flakus of Stabbing Westward, they decided to launch a new trio: Chokt.

Creative Process & Sound

Chokt's musical identity was deliberately distinct from Murray's primary project. Where Lo-Pro leaned into a traditional hard rock palette, Chokt embraced an industrial rock aesthetic that echoed Flakus's work in Stabbing Westward and Stevens's contributions to The Clay People. The trio began laying down material in 2005, and their division of labor was straightforward: Murray handled all vocal duties, while Flakus and Stevens each split the responsibilities of guitar, bass, and programming. Rather than hiring a live drummer, the band relied on a drum machine to drive the rhythmic foundation of their tracks. Perhaps most notably, the three members never actually gathered in the same room to write or record. Instead, they collaborated entirely through Pro-Tools, emailing individual parts back and forth until each song took shape. This remote workflow gave each member the freedom to contribute at his own pace while keeping the project flexible enough to slot around their other band commitments.

Release Strategy & Discography

Rather than assembling a traditional album and dropping it all at once, Chokt adopted a drip-feed approach that stretched across nearly four years. The band began streaming individual tracks in 2006, releasing a handful per year and continuing the pattern through 2009. Most of these songs first appeared on the band's own Myspace page, though a few were also shared through Murray's personal Myspace. The full catalog of released tracks includes four songs from 2006—Train Home to Nothing, Passion, Burning, and Distress—followed by Magazine in 2007, Launch Pad and Tonight in 2008, and the final entry, Only You, in 2009. That last track marked the end of Chokt's public output, arriving just as Murray reactivated Lo-Pro, which released the Letting Go EP in October 2009 and the full-length The Beautiful Sounds of Revenge in June 2010. In total, the eight streamed songs represented an album's worth of material the trio had recorded together.

Legacy & Future Intentions

Though Chokt's public run as a releasing entity was brief, the project left a clear mark on Murray's creative life. It served as a dedicated outlet for songs that simply didn't align with the hard rock direction he was pursuing with Lo-Pro, giving him a space to explore industrial textures and programmed rhythms during what would otherwise have been a creative dead period. The band's eight tracks, while never compiled into a formal album release, constituted a complete body of work that fans could follow year by year. Looking ahead, Murray signaled in a Lo-Pro interview that Chokt's low-key existence was not meant to be permanent. He expressed clear intentions to build greater exposure for the project, declaring that the band would not remain a secret for long. That statement positioned Chokt not as a one-off side experiment but as a potential ongoing creative vehicle, one that could eventually step into a more visible role alongside Murray's primary band.