[Music Mondays] St Patrick’s Day, 2025 Edition.
I’m going to allow myself some creative licence and go in a completely different direction for our Music Monday periodical.
First of all, I feel compelled to branch away from what I’m sure will be a blogosphere accentuated with a whole bunch of usual listicles, etc. Not that those aren’t valid - in fact, they’re very important - but for myself I’d like to say a few things around The Emerald Isle and its’ alternative music scene. As an Australian, and ergo one of many used to St Patty’s Day being largely confined to green hats and Guiness on tap as the height of Irish cultural expression, provide something at least a tad more nuanced.
Furthermore, as someone with strong ethnic roots in Gaelic climes (once again, similar to every second Caucasian Aussie - a claim folks will often proudly berate today), I live in a nation inextricably tied to Ireland in terms of kinship ties.
For instance - my forebears, originally of the Gillett namesake, were sent to the penal-colony-island as pale-skinned vassals of an imperial state. This isn’t a particularly My great-great-however-many-grandfather, Henry Gillett, was largely responsible for the settling of both the Clarence River and the town of Grafton in NSW. As an ex-Coffs-Harbourian, I won’t pretend that’s something I particularly wear as a badge of honour! Much like my own proclivity for topical deep-diving, I have an older relative who’s made a decades-long project of tracing this particular familial line throughout Australian and Irish geneaology alike. Yep, neurodivergence is highly heritable, after all.
The fuck does any of this have to do with Music Mondays, you say?
Glad you asked!
The phrase ‘keep your politics out of my XYZ’ is one of my topical bugbears. You really can’t cleanly isolate the complexities of macroeconomics, history, policy and social psychology/sociology from music, especially.
And if anything’s going to inform the specific flavour of musical delights from this passionate and folkloric nation, it’s going to be a colourful and very, very chequered history.
Let’s begin by going way back. Like, way back. Right to the roots you associate with the place, and likely similar to the tunes being blared off the stressed publican’s Bluetooth speaker as you watch beads of condensation slide down the pint-glass at your uncharacteristically packed-for-a-weeknight local watering hole.
IRISH HEAVY: ORIGINS
Unlike the furor about separating art from artist in the greater musical discourse, it’s a little easier to reconcile why and how Ireland has been a thorough patron of the arts - music in particular.
Katie Birtles from Trafalgar notes, for instance, that the earliest anthropological/paleontological evidence traces Irish folk music to 500BCE. In addition, it’s noted that instruments such as the harp, bagpipes, flute, skin-drums and pipe were used by early Celtic settlers around this period as a form of oral storytelling and intergenerational transmission of history, culture and information.
Harpists also held high positions within traditional feudal Irish/Gaelic society, enjoying positions as courtiers and consultants to chieftains and aristocracy. Then good ol’ Queen Elizabeth I did An Imperial England and decreed all the harps be burnt. Nice one, cool and good! Ever the oppositional-defiant bastards that they are, the continued primacy of folklore and an intense focus on preserving culture via oral/aural traditions persisted through these times and into… well, honestly, more hardship.
As with their Scottish neighbours, balladry and poetic flair became instrumental (pun intended) devices to tell tales of valor and heroism, of struggle and sacrifice. Particularly relevant within the context oh, I don’t know, endless incursions and invasions from multiple eras of Early/Middle Age (and onwards) oppression?
Through a complex and devastating blend of neo-feudal landlord oligarchy (totally can’t relate to that, these days…), a large-scale blight with thanks to good ol’ Phytophthora infestans, policy initiatives poorly attempting to redress said blight that only ended up making basic staples prohibitively expensive?
Yeah, the Great Hunger and the laissez-faire handling of the situation by the landed gentry wiped an entire fifth of Irelands’ population off the map, whilst also sending an overwhelming portion of the nation into a spiral of intergenerational disadvantage. Being oft expensive and inaccessible at the best of times, traditional musical instruments such as those described before became more status symbol than commoners’ catharsis.
And yet, fast forward right through to the late 60’s/early 70’s, Ireland began to see both musical revival - and transformation. With the nascent rumblings of heavy metal just off to the East via Black Sabbath et al, the entrenched tradition of musical expression in Ireland now began to also absorb the percussive tidal-waves emanating from English punk, NWOBHM and proto-metal alike. Combine that with both the strife associated with the Troubles, Thatcherism and struggles finding footing in our modern worlds’ rapid shift towards trans-contintental consumerism/globalisation? Well, you’ve got fertile and lush, green grounds for some seriously pent-up collective emotions.
Around the same time, Seán Ó Riada’s Ceoltóirí Chualann (later renamed to The Chieftains - i.e., Anglicised ‘ cause Speak English Or Die?) brought the table-stompin’ hurdy-gurdy whimsy we all associate with, I dunno, leprechauns and rainbows. Improvements in mutual mass communication served to promulgate a rebirth of traditional Gaelic folk music, but also a much gnarlier and musically rebellious tangent within the nation.
And to the good folk of the international music jury, I now call to have several key slabs of Irish heavy goodness to be brought forth for your own examination.
Exhibit A: Stiff Little Fingers.
Formed in 1977 in Belfast, this Irish unit were instrumental in deploying the foundations of punk rock in the Green Isle. Musically, anyway - Irish culture is punk culture, if you ask me. Drawing as much from New Wave as the snotty street-punk of those Londonside, there’s a decidedly Irish snark to their first two LPs in particular, and I’m not talking sounding like Flogging Molly. Noisy as hell and chaotic, it’s like Gaelic Black Flag from the get-go.
A personal favourite mine’s always been the ‘79 debut LP Inflammable Material, but I also highly rate sophomore effort Nobody’s Heroes as well as the See You Up There! EP.
Link to Inflammable:
Exhibit B: Primordial.
Not ashamed to graft the rich musical history of their forefathers, Primordial have nevertheless plied a heavier and more black-metal-inflected end of the heavy music spectrum since their inception in the late 80’s/early 90’s.
And if any country is qualified to scream bleakly about oppressive and grim themes, it’s our Irish friends. Themes of historical struggle, inescapable oppression and Celtic pride emanate throughout the lyrical tomes of the bands’ expansive discography. I’ll admit freely that I’ve often found traditional Irish music to grate somewhat against extreme metal at times, but Primordial’s a major exception.
Possibly a hot take, but I actually feel some of their best canonical offerings are to be found later on - my two fave LP’s from these scene-veterans are The Gathering Wilderness and To The Nameless Dead, respectively, with Redemption At The Puritan’s Hand coming up a very close 3rd-place for the bronze medal.
Where Greater Men Have Fallen is also a damn strong runner-up, though.
Here’s the title-track as proof (courtesy of Metal Blade Records)!:
Exhibit C: Abaddon Incarnate.
This is an interesting one for me, as Abaddon Incarnate represent two things:
One of the first grindcore bands I ever listened to, and
The first band I ever supported live, for my first ever live show as a musician! Specifically, on bass and for my old band Awful Noise, when they toured Australia in 2017.
I made #1 very known to the guys (as well as a bunch of other dithering/fanboying, TBH) and, like basically every Irish person I’ve ever met, they took it with humility, cheek and banter all in one.
Were you not knowledgeable about the band nor the genre, you’d be forgiven for assuming the nice folks in Abaddon might not be capable of feeling anything other than seething rage and vitriol.
That’s what attracted me to the band, TBH, and the genre at large. A new, basement-dwelling marriage of hardcore/punk fury with metallic chest-thudding sonic weight, all wrapped up with these guys in an absolutely scathing musical package since the early 90s.
The Last Supper, Nadir, Dark Crusade, Pessimist or The Wretched Sermon? Nah, c’mon bro. I don’t even want to disservice such an influential (in Ireland particularly, but also for myself as a ratbag undiagnosed-ADHD teen) act with ranking any of their albums.
Seriously. If you’re in a need of absolutely Draino-style cleaning the existential demons outta the psychological plumbing? Chuck these guys the fuck on.
Like an audiological bleaching and exorcism all in one:
Some Other Great Craic To Piss Off Loyalists And Neighbours Alike:
Hydropneumothorax - Liquifactive Necrosis (LINK HERE): Absolutely gutter-coded Last Days of Humanity-style goregrind. A one-man project from Cork (currently on hiatus and also of equally-gnarly Pyemesis fame). Perfect for flinging at monarchs and neo-conservative shitheels with flaming bags of [redacted].
Wardomized - Money Isn’t Real (LINK HERE): Extolling the ultimate in anti-capitalist/anti-fascist fervour brewing in the Emerald Isle’s collective discontent, these folks are sadly on hiatus but have a fantastic discog jam-packed with flat-stick EP’s and LP’s mined as much from US-style hardcore punk as Napalm-adjacent grindcore.
Gourd - Self-Titled EP (LINK HERE): Holy hell, this is nasty business. A two-man project which, from what I’ve seen is largely contained to this dank and nihilistic noise/doom-metal EP, it’s potentially in the interests of public safety there’s not much else in terms of recorded output. Raw, harsh and nasty. This one’s for the Khanate/Indian, heck even maybe the Merzbow fans.
Stump - A Fierce Pancake (LINK HERE): The tectonic underpinnings of modern global metal and punk via the post-punk scene should never be omitted from any decent historical review of alternative music. Stump might not have the same household-name prescience of English alternatives, but they’re of no less importance!
Rightio! And with all that set, allow me to chase me leprechaun o’er the pot o’ gol- yeah, nah mate. I’m actually going to go chuck on more Abaddon Incarnate.