Church Tongue shares the love on ‘You’ll Know It Was Me’

You can’t buy the kind of viral publicity that Church Tongue received from its first-ever live performance at a 2015 house show opening for Columbus natives Beartooth. 

The newly minted metalcore crew – then based in Indianapolis but now headquartered in Columbus – venerated the all-out stage antics of bands such as the Chariot and the Dillinger Escape Plan. And it was in that spirit that guitarist Chris Sawicki stepped onto the makeshift stage in somebody’s living room and set himself on fire. The next morning, grainy footage of the self-immolation was all over the metal internet.

“It was not intended to be the big publicity stunt that it turned out to be,” said Sawicki, now 10 years older and wiser. “Hindsight’s definitely 20/20 on that. It was really just like, ‘This is our first show, let’s do something crazy.’ No one was anticipating [someone would] film it.”

“We got so much press out of it right off the bat,” he continued. “I was very overwhelmed by it, because a lot of comments were not nice. And I actually get why, because it’s very dangerous, especially in a house.”

Sawicki hasn’t dealt in DIY stage pyro in a long time, but Church Tongue is still going strong. The band’s latest EP, You’ll Know it Was Me, is due out on Friday, and the musicians will celebrate its release at Half Baked Warehouse the following night (Saturday, Feb. 15), performing alongside My Ticket Home, Sour, Walking Wounded, and Violent Nature. It’s one of a handful of record release gigs that will mark Church Tongue’s first shows since 2019.

“There was a lot of stuff going on right before the world shut down,” Sawicki said. “Our last show was December 2019, and Covid happened three months later. We already recorded our last EP, The Hubris of Gods Departed, and so we were just kind of waiting to put that out. And then right around the time that we put that out, that’s when [guitarist] Nicko [Calderon] got the offer [to join] Knocked Loose. Mike [Sugars], our vocalist, joined a band called Vatican. I moved to Chicago for about two years. It was kind of assumed that we were gonna slow down and take a break.”

Even with the band on semi-hiatus, “the Church Tongue group chat was never quiet,” Sawicki said. Calderon sent dispatches from Knocked Loose’s astronomical rise. Sugars talked about Vatican and his new project, Psycho-Frame. Sawicki joined the Columbus hardcore band Rejoice. And drummer Kyle Spinell started filling in with the post-metal outfit Yashira. Removed from the pressure cooker of constant touring, which had started to feel like a grind, the members of Church Tongue reassessed the band’s place in their lives.

“It’s very much a passion project, and something that we all love,” Sawicki said. “We’re all best friends in the band, so the chat never died. It just took a little while to get things going again.”

When the band finally reconvened in person, in November 2023, it was clear the break had done the members good. Following two weeks of furious songwriting sessions, they were ready to enter the studio to track You’ll Know It Was Me. Sawicki described it as the fastest and most collaborative writing process the band has ever had, and the resultant EP swings like a wrecking ball – six songs, 18 minutes, and not an ounce of fat on its sinewy frame. 

The 2000s metalcore scene that nurtured Church Tongue in its infancy is evident in the recording’s crunching riffs and beefy breakdowns, but the band isn’t limited by genre. The musicians use metalcore not as a set of rules but as a pivot foot – a fulcrum from which they can access sounds from both metal and hardcore, frequently at the same time. The EP’s title track prominently features eerie acoustic guitar, furious black metal blast beats, and a guest appearance by Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke. It also has a stomping midtempo section that feels destined to open a cathartically violent mosh pit whenever the band plays the song live. 

Despite the fearsome sonic backdrop, the album has a tender heart centered on the concept of love, which manifests in unexpected ways. The Converge-inspired “The Fury of Love,” with guest vocals by Initiate frontwoman Crystal Pak, burns with the white-hot intensity of a besotted romantic relationship. (Sugars: “I would carry you through hell on my back.” / Pak: “Please never leave my side/ We lead lives of the damned.”) The Colin Young-featuring “When it Betrays” is about loving oneself enough to embrace sobriety. “You’ll Know It Was Me,” meanwhile, serves as a preemptive ghost story, of sorts, with Sugars promising to haunt his wife forever if he dies before her.

Sawicki said these themes surfaced naturally as Sugars wrote, and the singer chose to lean into them rather than shying away. Still, the guitarist described the EP’s Valentine’s Day release as “kind of a fluke,” although fitting. 

Columbus hardcore has changed a lot since the last time Church Tongue played here. DIY music cycles are notoriously short, and a lot of the venues and bands that were here in 2019 are gone now. A new scene, populated by an impressively young core of fans, has flourished in their place. Sawicki has played in front of this rising class with Rejoice, and he’s excited to show them what a Church Tongue show has to offer – even if audiences will never again get to see him set himself ablaze.

“2019, for a lot of these 18- and 19-year-olds, they would have been 14 at the time, so they probably weren’t going to shows back then,” Sawicki says. “I think the youth are way more involved [now], and it’s great to see. There’s still a handful of old heads who I associate with that have been doing this a long time, and we still come out to shows, but it’s like, ‘Let the kids do their own thing.’ They might mosh a little goofy, but it’s so cool to see the support. They buy merch. They mosh real hard. And they just care.”