Full of sound and fury, the debut from this Irish four-piece howls at you from the very start, an unbroken series of thumping, crashing songs strewn with fractured, imagistic lyrics. Singer Dara Kiely has talked about his struggles with mental health, and it is tempting to layer biography over these nine songs, which veer wildly from industrial shocks to math-rock repetition, and place punkish howls alongside minimal-techno impulses. The lyrics could echo the screeds of a midnight drunk or the interior meanderings of fellow Dubliner Leopold Bloom: “Creeped into an exit / He’ll have it for breakfast / Said crawl on your knees / And tasting the freshest” runs a line from Fucking Butter. While the album is unpredictable, it is never chaotic: just as you think things might spiral out of control there is a pause, or a change of tempo or phrasing. It has the feeling of a splint being applied to a broken limb, or the force of will stopping the mind from turning feverish. It’s an album on which struggle is audible.
