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.
