Tongues Of Fire – Burn My Body Clean EP

North Carolina’s Tongues Of Fire are set to share their new EP, Burn My Body Clean, via Florida’s Godless America Records on August 27th. Whilst the band’s name may sound like it comes from somewhere between Spinal Tap and Black Sabbath, this is not the case. Tongues Of Fire are a band that lean heavily into post punk, but with the spiky abrasive side smoothed out, something that gives the band a darker more driven feel than many of their predecessors and contemporaries. Something that makes sense as with their latest release, as the Burn My Body Clean EP is informed by loss and grief.

The group’s songwriter, singer and guitarist, Lowell Hobbs, endured the loss of his mother after a gruelling cancer battle during the recording of the band’s last release, 2019’s Everyone Hates Us. Burn My Body Clean is a cathartic recording that is informed by the process of grief and mourning, although this is not limited to the traditional stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This is a raw and honest response to the death of a loved one.

The first of the five monosyllabic tracks that populate Burn My Body Clean is Room, a relentless and claustrophobic burst of post punk energy. After the initial attack Tongues Of Fire take you into the darker and more measured Numb, whilst the delivery is slower the momentum and fury of the opening track is still present. Clean brings another element to bear with the grungey overtones. As we enter the latter stages of Burn My Body Clean we are hit with Silence, track that brings a counterintuitive post punk rage to the EP, before Inst(rumental) brings things to a close, a track that contains a sample of Lowell’s Mother’s voice.

Burn My Body Clean co-exists in several worlds, the dark post punk collides head on with an old school punk sensibility and a fuzzed out attitude from the dawn of the grunge era. This is all fuelled by exploring Lowell’s grief and loss, something we have all experienced and something that I can personally relate to. Burn My Body Clean is a cathartic, intimate and personal EP that could have been lost in personal sentimentality, instead it reflects the rage, pain and helplessness you experience when watching a person you love slowly fade away.

Burn My Body Clean can be pre-ordered via Godless America Records