Cinder Gospel from Matchbook Sermons by AshChoir

This piece takes the faint whisper of a burned regret and amplifies it into a guttural roar. It’s built on tension that stretches, a droning bass thickening like city smog, reflecting the grim, forgotten corners where every raw truth finds its voice. The sound grinds, marked by rust-laden slide guitar and kettle drums sampled from alley trash bins, creating a percussion that rattles with urban decay. Mid-track, a children’s choir sample, unsettlingly reversed, snaps forward under Lucille’s blistering Hammond, an almost violent shift that forces a collective clarity. This is where the band's ritual, the turning of ash to promise, hits hardest. Marlboro’s voice, raw and unpolished, becomes the conduit for that shared vulnerability, pulling you through anguish toward something like fierce, cathartic uplift. The omnipresent ‘ash hiss’ from those old motel tapes wraps around everything, making the grit feel like a necessary part of the confession itself.

Tracklist

5.	Cinder Gospel	3:24

Lyrics

Slide guitar drones under flickering tubes
Tape crackle mutters the opening psalm

Cigarette halos crown the pew-row hush
Ashflakes parade like bankrupt wedding rice
Marlboro rasp grinds pewter vows to crush
Kettle drums rumble, bass pelts tin with rice
Smoke choir inks invoices on dry cracked skin
Settle with coughs, redemption hides within

Sleepwalk me clean, burn me bright once again
Stoke these cinders till bar-dark yields gold
Smoke choir now sings the price we still must owe

Lucille detunes the Hammond, all chains snap
Rusted pedals gasp, sending sparks in laps
Rail-spine bass retaliates—kettle snap
Youth choir reverses, and vowels spin relapse
Smoke elegy scrawls my ribs with black sap
Sing till the matchhead forgives its own trap

Sleepwalk me clean, burn me bright once again
Stoke these cinders till bar-dark yields gold
Smoke choir now sings the price we still must owe

Tape crackle swells, our regrets march in rows
One spark devours each borrowed tomorrow
Leave vows unlit, and the sirens take toll
Choose charcoal amen, or suffocate whole

Sleepwalk me clean, burn me bright once again
Stoke these cinders till bar-dark yields gold
Answer the blaze, keep the sorrow controlled

Credits

from Matchbook Sermons, released September 3, 2025

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