With protest back on the streets and the end getting nigher by the day, Dublin's Gurriers make a timely return with a triumphant second album where the political is very much personal and the new world is still waiting to be born.
All menace and intent, the five-piece, led by iron-lunged front man Dan Hoff, bolt together a furious fusillade of post-industrial soundscapes, abrasive melodies and politically-charged lyrics on Nobody’s Coming to Save You.
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They have a lot to say. With their sociopolitical antennae primed once again, this is a noise rock onslaught that bristles with fury against late stage capitalism, broadsides against big tech, and the struggle to just get by.
They’re certainly willing to take their vision and beliefs to extremes. On Today is Not Enough, Hoff is in full pelt, almost drowned out by atonal sheets of guitar and an unforgiving rhythm section that is always willing to pull in the opposite direction. The strutting, syncopated Party Lines opens with a quote from American political scientist and historian Michael Parenti and takes on all the buzzing menace of something from the Manic Street Preachers’ best album, The Holy Bible.
Nothing Happens Twice, which has the same fury as RATM, is the band at their most splenetic and unhinged, while Drones may take a lyrical cue from the winningly absurdist Gilla Band ("Can’t even hold a job down without tears on my pillow/Cursed with a permanent frown, everyone thinks I’m an a***hole").
When they do dial it down on I Wish I Was, it’s for a wistful ballad that recalls something of Fontaines’ dreamy poetic reveries. But they really lock into focus on closing track Crybaby, a shoegaze waltz that may signal a way forward for Gurriers’ slightly scattershot impotence.
This is relentless stuff. Gurriers remain a moving target. Taste the rage.
