‘Church Street’ is a track of the week on The Indy Review and New Sound Union, and played on over 150 radio stations worldwide.
The new offering from Merthyr Tydfil’s least favourite sons Martyrs is nearing. The 7th in their current run of 10 EP releases, The Church Street EP (Out April 15th) is a collection of heart-wrenching songs about small town life seen through the twin rose lenses of distance and time. Each song is accompanied by a brand new music video crafted by the band themselves.
These are majestic, melancholic odes to battered hearts, broken people and bittersweet memories. As ever, the record was lovingly handmade by Jon Howells and Michael J Hall in echoing kitchens and cluttered attics on the Kentish coast.
It’s a collection of songs the genre-defying, algorithm-baiting and dedicatedly DIY duo have been crafting in the background of their prolific release schedule for the past two years.
“It’s the most long term work we’ve done, and it’s been the hardest to get right” says Michael, “These are the best songs we’ve written so we wanted to give them the time and attention they deserve. The problem became that we just didn’t want to let them go, so we got stuck in a loop of iteration and reiteration for almost two years.”
Michael continues “It was largely my fault, and Jon was kind enough to indulge me when I needed to revisit them over and over again.”
Jon adds, “It was entirely Michael’s fault. I would have sent the songs out back in 2024 and slept like a baby. His insidious desire to have our stuff sound “good” and “Not have an 8 minute intro section” will be our undoing.”
The title track, Church Street, is a knowing tale of doomed romance augmented by orchestral swoons and shimmering guitar lines.
“It’s about brief loves that you both know won’t come to anything, but which you put your whole heart into anyway, knowing the end is just around the corner” says Michael, “It takes place in the old haunts Jon and I both frequented as kids because for us there’s a sense of romance to those streets, a fondness you can’t eradicate, and a kind of sadness too.”
“Musically, this song sets the tone for the whole EP,” says Jon, “My attempts to blame Michael for the delays aside, one of the reasons this release took so many iterations to get right is because the tracks are unavoidably epic in scale and arrangement. There are more ways to get that wrong than right. The final chorus of Church Street is the best thing I’ve committed to tape. And by tape, I mean hard-drive. But that sounds less romantic.”
He Breaks Horses is an acoustic-driven, folk-influenced piece punctuated by blazes of brass and dramatic beats. Inspired by the Merthyr Rising of 1831, it charts the experiences of the Welsh working class, their oppression by both Government and iron masters, and their ultimate revolt during which the ubiquitous Red Flag being raised for the first time, and which led to the Trade Union movement that proved essential to worker’s rights across the UK.
Michael says “It was months of research, dozens of pages of notes and ideas, a lot of learning in the process of getting the lyric right. You don’t want to do the memory of those involved a disservice by taking it lightly. I hope we’ve done them justice. We’re proud to make politicised music.”
“Spaghetti Western Guitar, Madchester bass, 80s Pro Wrestling entrance pomp, a full orchestra, metal power chords” Jon sums up, adding “It’s the most “Martyrs” arrangement we’ve done. Whether it’s a microcosm or a caricature, it works for me and I’m super proud of it.”
Twist The Cap is a gorgeous, intimate story of addiction that sings with late night memories and chiming guitar.
“It’s a sad story, but a hopeful one” Michael states, “One of the earlier iterations was so bleak I just couldn’t face finishing it, then the next version was so overly optimistic it became ludicrous. I think we finally got the balance right. It’s not about one specific person, but about a number of friends we had growing up, blended with my own personal experiences over the years.”
Jon runs down the music thusly: “Lofi melts into vaporwave melts into soulful guitar on this one. The drums really make it for me. Really organic room sound pushing stylistically against the 20 or so layers of gritty analogue synthesisers and driving what could otherwise have drifted into funeral dirge.”
On the Bandcamp Exclusive Download version you’ll also find You’ve Been Here Before, an evocative and nostalgic sound collage, built from the childhood moments that make us what we are. Layered with spoken word samples, field recordings and lo-fi loops, it mourns the end of a lost world.
There’s also Having The Window Open Helps is a spoken word delve into nights of insomnia, when you find yourself driven to despair by rumination and anxiety. Taking its cue from the darker elements of the band’s 2022 debut album Un Diavolo In Casa, it’s a pitch-black, Carpenter-synth drenched waking nightmare.
Bandcamp Exclusive Closer Twist The Cap (Alternate Version), an earlier iteration of the song, offers an insight into the creative journey the track has been on over the last two years.
“We offer more on Bandcamp than we do on streaming because we want to lure folks away from disposable ways of listening. Download it, own it, have something from the artist that belongs to you rather than something completely transient that’s on loan to you from streaming sites” Michael states.
A suite of music videos, all made by the band’s own fair hand, are dropping at regular intervals over the coming weeks and are linked above.
MARTYRS are Jon and Michael, who formed their first high school band together in a Welsh castle, split, then reconnected many years later on the Kentish coast to make music together once more. Their passionate DIY ethic has led them through two albums (2022’2 Un Diavolo In Casa and 2024’s Luminism) as well as their current run of ten EP releases. Bonded by a shared love of Japanese Pro Wrestling, REM, Aphex Twin and Dario Argento, their genre-agnostic, algorithm-defying sound brings both confusion and joy to their small but dedicated niche of constant listeners.
Bandcamp: martyrsmusicuk.bandcamp.com
Email : martyrsmusicuk@gmail.com
Bluesky: martyrsmusic.bsky.social
Website: martyrsmusic.com
Merch: https://martyrs.teemill.com/