Nothing about is remotely ‘conventional’. The title of their last album even made ironic reference to this: ‘Most Normal’. Their music is abrasive and free of familiar structuring and melodies. It’s strange, thrilling and boundary-pushing noise rock, the kind that’s so tight and industrially-textured it’s often closer to (the more experimental end of)  dance music, rather than anything resembling ‘rock’. On their fourth album ‘Pugnello’, the Irish four-piece have pushed themselves further than ever before, coming up with an array of exhilarating, singular compositions that resemble some warped, intimidating brand of techno emanating from the weirdest rave you’ve ever ended up at.

Frontman Dara Kiely is our MC through this strange, scary territory. His lyrics across ‘Pugnello’ tackle grief and mental health diagnoses through a fractured lens, wherein his fraught, sometimes-talking-sometimes-howling delivery invokes random cultural references (from Power Rangers to Harold Lloyd) as an escape, an attempt to desperately escape into the familiarity of memory. It’s head-spinning, sometimes funny and often surprisingly affecting. Paired with some of ’s hardest, most digi-pummeling works, it adds up to one of the most inventive and electrifying albums of the year.

CLASH spoke to Dara about his art, his different methods of writing, mental health, s musical innovations and more…  

CLASH: Let’s talk about ‘Pugnello’s artwork. You’ve recently taken up painting? How long have you been doing it for and what’s the medium of the album cover?

I’ve always been really into abstract expressionism; Rothko, Pollock, all those people. I can’t really sketch, but the abstract stuff really spoke to me. I was asked to do the artwork for the guys and I said that if it wasn’t done by July they could scrap me. So we had these point and shoot film cameras we’d take on tour. When we got them developed I’d paint over the shit ones that were smudged or out of focus. For some reason it worked better than painting on good ones. I did about 150 paintings, listening to the demos of the record while I did them, so that the album looked and sounded part of the same world.

I interpreted it as the inability to access a thought or memory. There’s this hazy, impressionist ‘real’ image, with this brutal interruption slicing through it. I feel like that fits with the album’s themes?

That’s absolutely beautiful, thank you. Yeah, so that original picture was the other way around; vertical not horizontal. Then Rough Trade’s graphic design team flipped it around. We had four or five covers based on these paintings. But it was the first time ever that we all disagreed on which one to use. But that’s a lovely description, I’ll take it. I’ll tell people that’s what the intention was [laughs]. 

I love the album’s title. I have no connotations for it, I don’t know what it means. Linguistically, I find it odd and it kind of gets to me. Is it some obscure reference or just a weird word?

I can tell you the reference. My dad passed away about three years ago and I properly met his side of the family. This uncle of mine wrote like eight books in 2015 alone. They’re all like horror fiction, it’s a bit like Garth Marenghi. Pugnello was one and it’s about a laptop with a haunted font that makes the person write scarier and scarier things. The font is called Pugnello. He’s going to sue us, which is fine. 

Obviously absurdist wordplay is a big part of how you write. It seems like meaning is sometimes the goal, but not all the time. Is that fair?

Totally. I love the idea of being silly. It’s an interesting juxtaposition because the music is so harsh. If I was being really blunt and on-the-nose with things it would be too much of the same energy. I love writing silly things. I have a horrible trait where I naturally turn everything into wordplay. My next door neighbour is called Hugh and every time I see him I have to say “how are Hugh?” [laughs]. 

I try different techniques; getting melodies from the demo tracks or morning pages, where you get up and write stream-of-consciousness lyrics first thing in the morning. Cut up stuff too.

In terms of the ideas and themes of ‘Pugnello’, I love all the references to random 2000s media and TV. I feel like there’s a bit of a broad trend at the moment of artists using their love of specific cultural forms to explore unique notions of identity. Can you elaborate on how you’re using these ideas?

Those references, to things like Gary Lineker and Top Cat, they’re comforting. The whole record is about comfort and distraction through grief and being diagnosed with schizophrenia. As a kid I’d distract myself with Power Rangers or whatever. Then in my teens there was ringtone culture; Crazy Frog and all that. So now I try to ascribe different types of anxieties with placeholders; the tense Davina McCall pause on Big Brother, the guilt of Charles Ingram, who cheated on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? It’s a nice short cut to how we can feel things.

Has your schizophrenia diagnosis altered how you write and create?

The first week I got it I was pretty miserable, until I realised that nothing had really changed. I write little notes about my life; what’s going on, documenting things. When I got the diagnosis I immediately wrote the lyrics to “Alogia”. It didn’t strictly alter the style of my words, but as a therapeutic thing, it made me want to write about it more, in order to understand it better. That’s how I learn things; looking back in hindsight and it makes more sense. 

To go back to the themes, I wanted to ask about nostalgia. Do you have any thoughts about nostalgia as a wider sociocultural way of thinking?

It all comes back to comfort and safety. With rose-tinted glasses things are easier to understand. I’m a big 20th-century history guy and things are easier to read as a story, rather than realising them in the moment. I’m just not really in the room sometimes, I’m lost. So these lines that I use trigger memories and thoughts and they then activate the performance, whether I shout or whatever. They give me references to points in my life so I know how to talk about them. I don’t know if that makes sense.

It absolutely does. It’s an interesting dichotomy, because Gilla Band’s music is so unique and forward-looking. Is that originality something you ever think about or strive towards when you’re creating it?

A bit. We like to develop things and not rest on our laurels. Every record we’ve done has been different and hopefully improved. I hope that’s the case. Everything we’ve written over the last four years is on the album. If we don’t like something, we don’t finish it. Before the album was being recorded, we had a track that sounded a bit safe. We scrapped it and in three or four practices we wrote “The Angelus”, which is way more experimental and interesting. 

We love doing things that we don’t think people have done yet. I’m pretty confident that I’ve said the words “why do they hide their bodies under my garage” more than any other person in history [laughs]. I like finding something that I’ve never done before.

Did Blawan ever get in touch about that cover?

He did, maybe like a year or two ago. He said that he liked it, which is cool. He’s an amazing artist. 

How does the finished article that is this album compare to the thing you imagined when you were writing and recording it?

We did it so gradually, over four years. My mission was to not shout as much and croon or sing a bit. I thought we did that, then I listened back to the album and I shouted even more [laughs]. For that element, it didn’t go where I wanted for vocals. We also wanted to combine acoustic drums and drum machines. We got this cool Erica Synths Perkons drum machine, we got buzzed about writing on that; it’s so straightforward and fun. 

There was no theme until the record was finished. Then the theme became documenting grief and the diagnosis. But it’s not that bleak, that’s one thing I wanted to get across, we didn’t want it to be a depressing thing. I didn’t name my father, it’s not about him. It’s about how grief and a diagnosis is unique to everyone.

‘Pugnello’ will be released on September 25th via Rough Trade Records.