Gilla Band Tighten the Chaos on Fourth Album Pugnello

Gilla Band’s fourth album, Pugnello, arrives with little concern for easing anyone in. The Dublin group formerly known as Girl Band has spent more than a decade building a sound around confrontation, and the new record intensifies that approach rather than diluting it.

Opening track “The Angelus” starts as a distorted drone before Adam Faulkner’s drums rupture the surface. From there, Dara Kiely’s voice swings between deadpan absurdity and frayed screaming, turning phrases and half-heard insults into shrapnel. Lead single “Placeholder” has a more playful groove, but it still escalates into shredded volume and sarcasm about comfort and inertia.

The tension comes as much from structure as from noise. “Alogia,” named for a condition linked to reduced speech, sets meditations on diagnosis against a looping bass groove. “Jacobsons” repeats like malfunctioning machinery, building from a pulsing hum into bursts of distortion.

Pugnello treats panic as a formal element. That control keeps the band’s chaos from becoming empty gesture.