Gilla Band's Pugnello: Glitching, Juddering, Furious — SkimNews
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- Gilla Band's fourth album "Pugnello" runs 42 minutes and opens with "The Angelus," a 2.5-minute sustained power chord drone underpinned by frantic snare-only drum patterns and shuddering bass explosions
- Frontman Dara Kiely delivers spoken-word vocals laced with absurd pop-culture references, including Top Cat's theme ("his close friends get to call him TC") and Bananas in Pyjamas
- Kiely's lyrics confront his schizophrenia diagnosis and his fractured relationship with his late father — on "Jacobsons" he bellows "I should be more sad" about failing to summon grief at his dad's death
- Pitchfork described the Dublin quartet as "Ireland's most influential band since My Bloody Valentine" in a feature heralding the album's arrival this summer
- Lambrini Girls' Selin Macieira-Boşgelmez said Gilla Band "basically reinvented guitar music," echoing comparisons to My Bloody Valentine from 35 years ago
- The album's sonic palette draws parallels to industrial techno acts Regis and Surgeon, while Kiely's acerbic cadences and put-downs (e.g., "I'm blaring a dangerous amount of Coldplay" on "Placeholder") evoke The Fall's Mark E Smith
Why it matters: For 2026 alt-rock listeners tired of releases that wear their influences on their sleeve, Pugnello offers a 42-minute record reviewers struggle to compare to anything — sustained drone textures, industrial-flecked rhythms, and Kiely's raw confessions about schizophrenia and paternal loss give the extremity genuine human weight beyond shock value.
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