Gilla Band's 'Pugnello' Is a Deafening, Hilarious Masterpiece of Controlled Demolition
Pugnello opens with a power chord that refuses to stop. Alexis Petridis, giving it five stars in The Guardian, describes what happens next: “The power chord doesn’t fade away. It just … keeps going, for the best part of two and half minutes.” His summary of the effect is the only correct one. “The sense of WTF? is overwhelming.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Recorded 2022–2026 across three Dublin studios — Hellfire, Yellow Door and Sonic — produced by the band, recorded and mixed by bassist Daniel Fox. The Irish Times’ Ed Power calls it “grindhouse production from Daniel Fox, who’s also the band’s bassist,” and the double duty is audible: this bottom end is engineered from inside the band, not imposed on it. Paste’s Grant Sharples names the new tool doing much of the damage, the Perkins HD-01, “an instrument as integral to the album’s sonic architecture as the OP-1 was for 22, A Million.”
The Spatial Dynamics: Pitchfork’s Madison Bloom, awarding 8.8 and Best New Music, hears opener “The Angelus” as “a battleground for Duggan Borges’ leviathan guitar and Faulkner’s breakneck 170 bpm percussion.” The bigger change is where the voice sits. Where Dara Kiely’s shout once “seemed to emanate from a distant, shuttered room,” Bloom writes, here “his voice has a warmer quality, and it is mixed in a way that feels intimately entwined with the music.”
Standout Performance
Kiely. Stereogum’s Chris DeVille, making it Album Of The Week, gets it in six words: “Kiely is a master of controlled volatility.” Then the harder truth about why that is skill and not symptom: “Not everyone can melt down so magnetically.”
Why It’s Certified
Because it is genuinely funny — “Crisp Pop” sorts Britpop bands by crisp flavour, Oasis as Cheese & Onion — while carrying the death of Kiely’s estranged father across all ten tracks, closing on “At the Gallop,” named after a rare album by his late father’s band. Dork gave it 5/5; DIY called it “their fiercest, most ruminative release to date.” Bloom’s verdict is the whole review: “It’s dizzying, distressing, hostile. It’s a certified banger. And it hurts so good.”