On Thursday, 14 May 2026, The Glasgow School of Art briefly stopped being an art school and turned into the sort of beautiful industrial panic attack only CHALK can engineer. I have been evangelising about this band ever since catching them supporting Sprints at SWG3 Studio back in 2023, boring friends and alarming strangers with the zeal of a doomsday preacher who has traded scripture for distortion pedals. Watching them now, with Glasgow hanging on every bass throb like sinners awaiting judgement, felt less like vindication and more like watching the future arrive in stompy Dr.Martins.

Ross Cullen and Ben Goddard stalked the stage like men trying to exorcise Belfast through volume alone, while touring drummer Finn McAleavey — a newer addition to the live line-up — gave the songs a physical violence they previously only implied. The old CHALK setup always sounded mechanised, all brutalist synths and anxiety-rave pulse, but the live drums have changed the chemistry. The songs now breathe, sweat and occasionally threaten to punch somebody through a wall.

The setlist was studded with gems. “Tongue” opened proceedings like a prison riot conducted by Giorgio Moroder, before “Pain” and “Can’t Feel It” shoved the crowd straight into the red. The newer Crystalpunk material sounded colossal — not polished, exactly, but sharpened, like broken glass swept into nightclub strobes. “1980” lurched forward with the haunted swagger of Nine Inch Nails if Trent Reznor had been raised on Colonial tension and warm cans of Tennents. “Pool Scene” arrived like a panic attack at a rave. “Bliss” and “Static” pulsed with the ghost of Underworld, while “Skem” sounded like the entire city of Belfast trying to claw itself out of wet concrete.

And then there was the atmosphere. Christ. Purple smoke curled around the venue in thick poisonous ribbons while lasers slashed through the darkness like a nightclub operating inside a war zone. The lighting was absurdly theatrical — half warehouse rave, half end-times sermon. CHALK understand something many modern bands don’t: if you are going to make music this intense, you should look like you are summoning a storm while performing it.

Mid-set, the band plunged into the audience during the heavier material, turning the room into one convulsing organism. There are bands who “work the crowd”, and then there is CHALK, who seem determined to drag the crowd bodily into the songs with them. At one point the room looked like a collapsing nightclub scene from a lost cyberpunk film: bodies flying, smoke choking the air, Ross Cullen barking into faces like a man trying to start a revolution with pure adrenaline.

What makes CHALK so compelling is that they are unmistakably Irish without ever lapsing into cliché. Their music carries the psychological residue of Belfast — division, paranoia, dark humour, identity crisis — but filters it through industrial techno, post-punk and rave culture. You can hear echoes of David Holmes, Stiff Little Fingers and the electronic dread of Aphex Twin, yet they never feel derivative. They sound like the future if the future grew up ducking emotional shrapnel.

The encore was devastating. “Get Fucked” landed with all the elegance of a brick through a cathedral window before “Conditions” closed the night in a delirious wave of catharsis. Hearing that song now, after the evolution from the Conditions EP trilogy into the full-length assault of Crystalpunk, felt strangely emotional. Conditions I, II and III built the mythology piece by piece — all tension, grime and nervous energy — before Crystalpunk arrived as the fully realised manifesto.

There has been online chatter suggesting CHALK intended Crystalpunk to be their final statement or that they would stop recording after it. That does not appear to be accurate. The band recently clarified that the “only album” idea was more a creative mentality than a literal ending, and that they still have more to say as CHALK. Which is fortunate, because the idea of this band disappearing now would feel like somebody bulldozing a cathedral just as the stained glass finally caught the light.

CHALK remain one of the few genuinely exciting bands operating in Britain and Ireland right now. Most contemporary post-punk acts sound like men sadly reading spreadsheets in German nightclubs. CHALK sound like societal collapse you can dance to. I love them with the sort of unhealthy devotion normally reserved for cult leaders and dangerous exes. Long may they continue making beautiful noise.

Article: Angela Canavan