Belfast’s Chalk throw wide the next bleeding wound of their debut album ‘Crystalpunk’ with new single ‘Tongue’. Conjuring a landscape of rage, obsession, and imminent collapse, with teeth-gritted corridors of industrial echo and whispers crawling up the spine.
A whistled scream forced thin through clenched teeth opens ‘Tongue’, a mouthful of tension coiling before the first blow. Benedict Goddard’s distorted guitar riff comes corroded, dragging sparks joined by the low, growling vocals of Ross Cullen. A buffering final opening line hangs in limbo before exploding into a barrage of mechanised fury.
‘Tongue’ coils each returning verse tighter, swelling with ire until the words become blunt confession, self-erasure spat like gravel, coarse and jagged. Chalk dwell in the long shadow of ‘90s industrial and electronic abrasion, Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy welded with modern gall built for sweaty catacombs, skin against skin in the heat and scrape of hedonistic collapse.
Detailing ‘Tongue’, Cullen added, “For the demo, I sang the opening few lines of the song on my earphone microphone, and that take made it to the final version. I had to whisper because my girlfriend was sleeping beside me. There was something ominous about the track, and it felt like it would be the beginning of something – I played the intro to Ben, and it felt like a “Eureka” moment for us and felt like we had accidentally taken care of the opening track for the album without thinking too hard about it.”
‘Tongue’ is the final bite of Crystalpunk, a debut album snarling and shimmering from the beauty, confusion, complexity, and intensity of their youth under and around the scars of conflict. If ‘Tongue’ is the threshold to Crystalpunk, it promises no absolution or no clean air, only clarity sharpened to a surgical edge.
Photo by Glenn Norwood
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