Chroma are the awesome three-piece who have been producing righteous bilingual noise pop for the last few years, powered by visceral riffing, pummelling drums and magnetic singer Katie Hall’s powerhouse vocal performances. On their debut album Ask for Angela released last year, she magnifies her personal experiences, wrestling misogyny to the ground, tackling feminism and raging at the unfairness of the mental health system.
” I like writing about like topics that I’m personally invested in,” Katie confides, “I like to put myself out there in terms of what I believe in but it’s at the heart of everything we do. I can only write from personal experience a lot of the time. So it’s topics that encompass that. I was talking to a friend the other day, and saying when you write something political, sometimes you’re like, okay, am I getting this right? There’s like an added pressure that you put on yourself. So I like to dial it back a little bit and be like, okay, this is how I feel about this, this is what I have experienced in my life.”
Hailing from the Welsh valleys, Chroma are an urgent three-piece that utilises punk, and rock sounds but moulds them in their way, confounding expectations at every turn and riven with a message. The primal drums of Zac Mather the dynamic bass and guitar pedal riffing of Liam “Bev” Bevan and Katie Hall’s fantastic whirlwind vocals make up an unmissable sound that’s bigger than you would expect three members to make. They are one of Wales’s best live bands around, it’s a sound that’s forged from hours and hours practising and piecing together ideas. “Bev and I can jam for Hours and get into a real sync until we sculpt something that we think is awesome…” explains Zac. “Bev has a pedal and at the top is the guitar and bottom is the bass and that makes our sound much bigger, he eats riffs for breakfast ! But also it’s finding loops really changed the sound between us… sometimes they can go wrong but we don’t let on…”
Taking its name from the campaign of the same name launched to prevent sexual assault in the UK, the material on their debut album Ask For Angela released last year, variously reflects on the band’s collective experience growing up in the South Wales Valleys, and explores the myriad lived experiences of young women.
“When we started writing the album, I remember chatting with Zac about how your debut album almost represents your life up until now,” Katie continues. “The songs on the album come from very personal experiences in my early to mid 20’s—some good, some very, very bad. I remember seeing an Ask For Angela poster in the ladies toilets of my local, and thinking ‘isn’t it fucked up that in public spaces, where you’re meant to have fun’.
“We wanted to use the name for the album to bring attention to the fact that the world, how it is today, is not safe for women. There’s a kind of softness to the name as well. We hope that people who listen to the album will feel seen, and less alone.”
Delayed because of lockdown frustrations the album became a “lifeline” for the band, when they finally hit rehearsals it was a release. Then finally recorded their debut at Giant Wafer Studios, Llanbadarn Fynydd in the heart of Wales, it was produced and mixed by Steffan Pringle (Adwaith, Future of the Left, Boy Azooga) and mastered by Tom Langrish at E1 Mastering (IDLES, Fontaines D.C, DITZ) in London.
“Working with Steff is great because he feels like a fourth member of the band sometimes,” explains Zac. “He’s able to approach situations and conversations without it sounding like he thinks he could do it better, if that makes sense. More of like a collaborative sort of thing.”
‘Girls Talk’ is an explosive song that’s existed for quite a few years, it’s become Chroma’s trademark song so far, it’s a fantastic admonishment of misogyny and celebration of girls who stand together. “Girls Talk is one of the first songs that we wrote together that has actually stuck throughout the years. When I wrote the song I was experiencing a lot of misogyny, and I always found myself in the same situation saying the same thing, which was ‘don’t talk over me, and don’t tell the boys you’re going to f*ck me after the show,” Katie explains. “Girls Talk looks at the power we have when we talk to each other and stand up against misogyny together. It changed the way I wrote songs and inspired our album, Ask For Angela.”
Lead single ‘Don’t Mind Me’ laced with chunky fuzzy bar chords and twitchy drums serves as a platform for Katie’s incendiary vocals charting her struggles with mental health and the system. “If you are having a breakdown and having like 40 panic attacks a day when someone tells you to go for a jog it doesn’t really help. Being fit can help don’t get me wrong but it is the furthest thing from your mind when you are going through that. I was lucky enough to get help from the NHS and go through therapy. It’s great when people come up to us after shows or send us messages saying that song speaks to them about their experiences too. I find myself singing the chorus and laughing sometimes too,” she smiles. The crushing black humour of the chorus (“Don’t mind me I’m just having a break down”) burrows its way into your head, it’s a song that offers a window on a universal struggle and offers an “I’ve been there too” lifeline to many who have suffered with their mental health, especially since lockdown.
Chroma recently supported the Foo Fighters in a huge show in Manchester at Old Trafford Cricket ground to 20,000 people. ‘It feels a little bit like a fever dream, to be honest with you,” Katie recalls. “Because I was shitting myself, pardon my French! It was amazing! I had a bit of a imposter syndrome getting in the lift I was thinking I’m going to be playing in front of 20,000 supporting the Foo Fighters, one of my all-time favourite bands! It was crazy’.”
They’ve just released another visceral single called ‘Bombs Away‘ that sounds like they’re up for a scrap, as Katie delivers a polemic take down of a love interest who has been messing her around. “Since I saw My Chemical Romance in Cardiff CIA as a 14 year old kid, I’ve always wanted to write a song for teenage girls to mosh to. Bombs Away is that song. I love going to gigs and I feel like my time getting pushed around in the pit made me fall in love with heavier music.”
“Bombs Away at its core is a breakup song. It’s about that moment you begin to see the wood for the trees, with someone you’re seeing. It’s that moment you realise someone’s taken advantage of your kindness and you’re just fuming. Bombs Away is that anger and then moving on.”
Katie shares how the band have been in conversation with their label Alcopop for a while before they signed with them. ‘Alcopop have a independent vibe, which could kind of fit us better, yeah, they’ve just been so supportive. Now everything has gone really well with the album. I’m really, really proud of it, really proud.”
“I think that there was a lot of, there was a lot of conversations at the time when we were talking to different record labels,” Zac adds “And some of them weren’t even UK based. And we were kind of going, do we really want to sign a ridiculous licensing deal with someone.. Do we want to give someone the rights to something that S4C or someone uses all the time and have that money come out of Wales and go to possibly America or another country?”
“We’re in a good place, cycle wise, where we kind of done that again with the second one. So half of the songs have survived, the ones that we’ve been working on in between stuff because then we’ve got another half to complete and, like, polish off. We’re in a really good place and it’s really exciting to play those songs and then write the new ones.”
“I think, with the first album, you’re like okay, those are the songs that you’ve started with, like songs like ‘Girls Talk’, and ‘Lost in Transit’.” Katie explains”Those are the ones we’ve played live for years. And those are the ones you know, which have been, good enough to stick around. With the next one, we haven’t played any of that stuff live. So it’s like crazy. I’m asking myself is my songwriting good enough? because you want to top the first one and make it better really.”
“I think we’ve got a little bit of confidence now, kind of going into the next one, it’s nice to get nominated for an award, and stuff like that. But the fact that people like it, and really on board with this is really, it’s really encouraging” She expands by detailing how their huge support slots and sets at festivals like Focus Wales and SXSW have helped grow their confidence as a band and as songwriters.
As I speak to the band they’re just about to head out on tour with Welsh legends Goldie Lookin Chain. “It’s amazing. We’ve been taken our first UK tour with some proper legends, so we’ll just see what happens,” Katie comments excitedly. “But what’s really funny is our first date tomorrow is with GLC in Manchester, and before we played the Foo Fighters gig in Manchester, I don’t know, I think it was just the way the cards had fallen that we’d not played Manchester before.So it kind of feels like we’re cheating the system, really, by coming in at Gorilla probably one of the biggest venues there, before we’ve even started. It was amazing, I’m really buzzing to be going back, to be honest.“
Ask for Angela has also been nominated for the Welsh Music Prize. “It’s amazing I’ve always gone to the awards with my friends every year, so it’s amazing for us to be nominated for a debut album we worked really hard on,” says Katie. “Also I want to take one of those big cardboard album covers of our record home with me!”
Photo credit: Wall of Sound
