{"id":543968,"date":"2026-07-11T05:48:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T05:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/543968\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T05:48:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T05:48:22","slug":"gilla-bands-twisted-love-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/543968\/","title":{"rendered":"Gilla Band\u2019s Twisted Love Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The metal front door to the Dublin complex where Gilla Band<\/a> keep their studio slams with such shocking force it could snap your fingers clean off. Behind it lies at least one possible explanation for the Irish band\u2019s mutant swarm of noise. \u201cIf you\u2019re here on a Wednesday or Thursday evening, the whole building is thundering,\u201d says drummer Adam Faulkner.<\/p>\n

Amid the metal drummers and diabolical wedding singers, \u201cthe trick,\u201d says wry bassist Daniel Fox, \u201cis to be louder than everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the last Sunday in May, the ceiling of their cluttered studio is only lightly pulsing. And really, Gilla Band do anything but make noise for noise\u2019s sake. The four-piece band acts like alchemists, exploiting instruments to their full potential. Whether the black steel guitar hanging on the wall or the Roland TR-909 behind Fox, it\u2019s all just another sound to pickle in their trademark combination of power and precision. When Dry Cleaning were working on their latest album, Secret Love, they went to Fox and guitarist Alan Duggan Borges in search of a little \u201cpoison.\u201d Gilla Band\u2019s sound, says DC guitarist Tom Dowse, is less about impact than an atmosphere that \u201cexists somewhere thrilling, unhinged, abstract, unknowable, humorous and beautiful, as opposed to just the pure catharsis of volume.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Gilla Band\u2019s four members, all 34 or 35, seem surprised when I say how intense I found their new album, Pugnello. This is the kind of record that makes you feel like Godzilla, 100 meters tall. In their windowless submarine of an HQ, hemmed in by pedals and machines, it\u2019s easy to forget to come up for air. \u201cI suppose I don\u2019t realize how weird it is,\u201d says their gentle frontman Dara Kiely. Perhaps their sensibilities are skewed: He recalls being at a party around 2011 and playing a song by no-wave sax player James Chance<\/a>. \u201cIt was like the EastEnders silence when there\u2019s a fight in the pub,\u201d he says, referencing the conflict-prone British soap. \u201cLike, \u2018Who the fuck is this guy?\u2019 Somebody put \u2018Use Somebody\u2019 by Kings of Leon on and I had to leave…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s regularly like, it should feel this uncomfortable, or it should feel this intense,\u201d says Duggan Borges, a debonair figure who also manages the band. \u201cWe\u2019re not kidding ourselves. It\u2019s not like, \u2018It needs a middle eight.\u2019\u201d Crammed on seats next to their live setup, the band laughs. Overhead, the Medieval Times flag from their previous Pitchfork interview<\/a> is stuck in a rafter. (Do they know Ed Sheeran? They\u2019ll never tell.)<\/p>\n

It took Gilla Band four years to make Pugnello; you can see how they might have gotten acclimated to their brutal squall during that time. Unlike 2022\u2019s sublime Most Normal<\/a>, which was inspired by Earl Sweatshirt<\/a>\u2019s Some Rap Songs<\/a> and the idea of making an album that flowed like a dream, there was no concept. As soon as they submitted Most Normal to their label, Rough Trade, they started divining for what might come next. \u201cIt was very much like someone had opened all the doors of the producer\u2019s room\u2014like, OK, we can go anywhere,\u201d says Faulkner, their cheeriest member. They quickly tilted towards bangers.<\/p>\n

The band recorded Most Normal during the pandemic, leaving them worried about how they\u2019d play it live. They pulled it off\u2014then quit worrying about how to translate their ideas from the studio to a show. For Pugnello, it\u2019s Faulkner behind the kit who will shoulder the heaviest load. The album opens with \u201cThe Angelus,\u201d which has a berserk jungle-inspired 170bpm rhythm played on a drumkit comprised of five snares: one brass, a big \u201970s birch number, a tiny maple one, a \u201cfunny-sized\u201d \u201950s thing, and an old marching drum with legs and a dampener to give it \u201ca big \u201980s power ballad\u201d sound. The tempo and setup kind of defy time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The metal front door to the Dublin complex where Gilla Band keep their studio slams with such shocking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,1635,60,11514,514],"class_list":["post-543968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-interview","tag-ireland","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}