Dublin Rockers Gurriers Channel Anger into Music, Refusing to Back Down

A rogue, a rascal, a lout – the Irish word ‘gurrier’ means a few things, but it always spells trouble. “It’s cool that the word has started to seep into other countries,” Dan Hoff, frontman of noisy Irish five-piece Gurriers , tells NME of their rising international profile. “Unless in France, where ‘guerrier’ means ‘warrior’. We found that out quickly.”

When we speak to them just ahead of their Cover shoot at a boxing gym in Manchester (a city that most of Gurriers now call home), they seem mild-mannered and thoughtful for a punk band, but it’s on stage where they truly step into the ring. Every gig, they go to war. But their battle-ready reputation for kicking up a ruckus won’t be news to you if you’ve caught them live over the last five years, razing club shows to the ground, bothering ever-larger stages at festivals, or opening arenas for the likes of Kneecap , Turnstile and Inhaler .

Live, they’re the aggressive manifestation of their songs of pain, longing, rage and injustice – with set highlights including the socially conscious garage-rock rumble of ‘Dipping Out’ or the modern world horrorshow of ‘Nausea’. “I think of how we perform as being confrontational in some ways,” shares bassist Charlie McCarthy. “That fits this idea of what Gurriers is: it’s an extension of our anger. We’re ready to give that space to breathe and to exist.”

Like all great bands, Gurriers look and feel like a gang: Hoff the punk poet, McCarthy a magnetic, fluid-limbed enigma, drummer Pierce Callaghan very much the anchor, and guitarists Mark MacCormack and Ben O’Neill in their own worlds either side. They’re much more than the sum of their parts with a simple shared mission. “If you’re coming off stage dry and not sweaty,” says Hoff, “then you’re not doing a good job.”

Hoff’s own frontman energy was inspired by two very different extremes. “I was very, very blown away by Damon Albarn when I was young,” he shares, “those early Blur days when he was wearing a tracksuit top, jeans, jumping around, looking like a mad person on stage and looking like he was having a lot of fun.” WOOO-HOOO ! But what about that dark intensity? “There was also Nick Cave in there with a lot more connection with the crowd.” Ah, that explains it.

Moshpits aside, they’re also creating a home for anyone who feels the same in this dumpster fire world. “Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but maybe we could flip the connotation?” ponders MacCormack. Could ‘gurrier’ be reclaimed as a badge of honour just like Kneecap have with ‘fenian’ ? ”Exactly,” he replies. “The word ‘gurriers’ is rooted in a lot of negativity. It would be synonymous with a thug or a hoodlum. We’re more the idea of community. The stage presentation is bombastic, let loose and a bit wild. We’re always trying to encourage you to be yourself, truly and fully, have a good time and be accepted.”

> “People can rise up against the system if they believe they can. We need to help each other to do that” – Dan Hoff

F ormed of boyhood friends and faces from the Dublin scene during COVID, Gurriers’ early material was written “for the four walls you were stuck in”, they previously told NME . That informed the anxious and claustrophobic sound of spunky 2024 debut ‘Come And See’, a rager of a record that led them to the world stage with a new sense of space, life and ambition.

McCarthy joined the band just after the LP was recorded but before it was released, and it pushed them to “take two steps back and take a look at how everyone fitted” as well as “essentially learning to write as a new band”. They also felt wrongly “lumped in” with the prevailing post-punk wave of the last decade, as they sought to evolve their own sound “to separate ourselves from the pack”.

The first sign of this huge leap came with 2025 single ‘Erasure’, a barbed-wire baseball bat with “an unwavering cry into the void in the face of imperialism and tyranny” against Israel’s continued attempt to wipe Palestine off the map that screams: “ THEY CANNOT ERASE THE PAST ”. “It was a complete stepping stone from album one to album two,” shares McCarthy. “Sonically, lyrically, all of it is in that song.”

It was the appetiser for their highly charged second album, ‘Nobody’s Coming To Save You’. One of this year’s most arresting and uncompromising listens, the record is a burly rugby tackle charge out of their “noise-gaze” beginnings into punk, grunge , hardcore and even trip-hop and dancier sounds. “We’re all very much sponges,” O’Neill says of their magpie approach, sharing how the band take his “leftfield” ideas and centre them.

“We’re all very interested in bands that experiment with genres like Sonic Youth , Radiohead , Nine Inch Nails ,” adds Hoff. “We tried to make it more expansive and dramatic.” To help, Gurriers had a dream team behind the desk. The album was mixed with the alt-rock midas touch of John Congleton ( St. Vincent , Modest Mouse , Mogwai ) and co-produced by Loren Humphrey (fresh from helping Geese and Cameron Winter become the sound of now) with IDLES ’ guitarist Mark Bowen.

Humphrey brought an intense work ethic, off-the-wall recording ideas and some hilarious storyline concepts for song titles that could double as drugged-up Bond movies, while Bowen proved as much a mentor as a producer. Wooing them with a pitch and ideas over text, he knew all too well the pressure to deliver a second album that “shows the world that you mean business”, McCarthy says. His pitch boiled down to: “I’m going to pull the best thing out of this because I’ve been there.”

> “We’re always trying to encourage you to be yourself, truly and fully, have a good time and be accepted” – Mark MacCormack

“We’re all big fans of Bowen and IDLES, but we’re also very conscious of not being ‘the little brother’,” adds MacCormack. “He was just like, ‘No, I want you to be your own band, and I know how to elevate the whole thing so that people take note’.”

“Dreams, decay and desire” are the core of ‘Nobody’s Coming To Save You’, Hoff says, and their direction for the album cover: a screaming baby chick, painted in black and blood red. It sounds despondent, but the title track is actually more of “a call to action”, though it was first inspired by a review of their debut that accused them of having many questions but no answers. “I was like, ‘We’re a band, we’re not a political party. We can’t create regime change here’,” says the frontman. “That’s why the first stanza of the song is me telling whoever reviewed that to do one, then it’s a bit more politically minded and serious from there.”

These are 10 songs of yearning, from Dublin to Sudan, from the online world to within the walls of Hoff’s own mind. The haunting ‘Drones’ hums with the rumination of his demons, “ cursed with a permanent frown, everyone thinks I’m an arsehole ”. “When he’s overly harsh on himself, I don’t want to say to you, ‘Oh, we actually don’t’,” says Callaghan, turning to his bandmate. “It removes Dan from that space creatively, from being in the moment and trying to work through something.”

Hoff takes pride in the band’s ability to be “quite honest about how we’re feeling” and lay it all out making the work. “We talk about mental health and most issues politically in the world. One of the best things about friendship is being honest with each other. In a creative outlet, that feels more authentic,” he says. “These are my negatives and my longings. How do you counteract that? You write a song about it and you hope that you change.”

Strength and progress through togetherness seems to be the Gurriers way. There’s a line from writer and activist Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope In The Dark that Hoff turned into a lyric on the title track and pumps through the veins of the record: “ Hope ain’t a whisper, it’s an axe you break down doors with ”. “That really resonated with me,” he says. “People can rise up against the system if they believe they can. We need to help each other to do that. It’s us vs them.”

That division looms, whether taking on the system that created the “ nepotistic and free ” corners of the music industry on ‘Shades’ or how “ cash eats up your dreams ” on the anti-capitalist ‘Waiting For Fisher’. The last time we met Gurriers they were “living with our parents and some of us are on the dole”. Have their circumstances changed? “Four of us don’t live in Dublin anymore, therein lies your answer,” replies Callaghan from his new Manchester home, sharing that their hometown is “just a very difficult place for young people to make it work”, let alone for creatives. “That’s why everyone emigrates.”

In spite of the odds seemingly stacked against them, Irish acts continue to thrive globally all while holding each other up. Fontaines D.C. are threatening to become the biggest Irish band since U2 with some monumental stadium shows ahead – a feat not lost on their fellow countrymen. “We have our own ambitions away from being just ‘the next Fontaines’,” asserts Callaghan, but still, “if they’re doing it, then what barriers are there for us to go and do it?”

Why not? With an album that demands to be heard by the masses, and with legendary tastemaking label PIAS behind them, this next year could see Gurriers take to the stages they once opened as headliners. And so these challengers step into the blue corner. But what’s the ultimate prize Gurriers are scrapping for? Hoff knows: “We want to be an important band.” Ding ding!

Gurriers’ ‘Nobody’s Coming To Save You’ is out September 25 via Play It Again Sam.

Listen to Gurriers’ exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here .

Words: Andrew Trendell

Photography: Joseph Bishop

Styling: Lucy James

Location: Corner HQ

Label: PIAS

The post “It’s an extension of our anger”: Dublin rockers Gurriers won’t back down appeared first on NME .

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