Chalk – Crystalpunk (Vinyl)

Released on ALTER in March 2026, Crystalpunk is the long-awaited debut album from Belfast duo Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard, former film students who spent four years and a trilogy of Conditions EPs evolving from jagged post-punk into something far stranger and heavier. The result is a genre of their own invention, a collision of industrial noise, techno and punk shaped by a youth lived around the scars of the North, made with the stated intention that this might be the only Chalk album to ever exist.

Everything on it moves like a live band with the volume in the red. Skem builds relentlessly without ever tipping over, One-Nine-Eight-Zero smuggles in a genuine pop melody, and the near eight-minute Béal Feirste brings the record's tensions to a politically charged climax before Ache closes it out raw and unguarded. Mixed by Scott Desmarais and mastered by Chris Gehringer, it sounds enormous. A serious statement from one of the most exciting bands on the island.