Gilla Band: Pugnello review – furious originality fuelled by cathartic aggression and absurdist confessions

(Rough Trade) Your favourite band’s favourite band unleash a thrilling and relentless 42 minutes of monstrous noise whose precise instrumental source always remains discomfitingly unclear Gilla Band have attracted some impressive plaudits since announcing their fourth album this summer.

A feature in Pitchfork heralding its arrival described them as “Ireland’s most influential band since My Bloody Valentine ”.

Should any readers feel this was a classic example of music journalism hyperbole, it was followed up with a succession of quotes from the Dublin quartet’s musical peers, all eager to attest to their importance, originality and impact.

One of them, Selin Macieira-Boşgelmez – one half of Brighton-based punk duo Lambrini Girls – went so far as to say precisely the kind of thing about Gilla Band that people said about My Bloody Valentine 35 years ago: “They basically reinvented guitar music.” Under the circumstances, there’s something faintly disappointing about the fact that Pugnello opens with a very prosaic and familiar sound indeed: that of someone striking a power chord on a distorted electric guitar.

But then something disconcertingly odd happens.

The power chord doesn’t fade away.

It just … keeps going, for the best part of two and half minutes.

That grinding drone underpins a track called The Angelus, punctuated by frantic bursts of warp-speed rhythm that would sound like drum’n’bass breakbeats were it not for the fact that they appear to be played live on a drum kit consisting entirely of snares.

The drone is eventually replaced by a series of ferocious, shuddering bass explosions, overlaid with a sound that could, theoretically, be feedback, but most evokes a dial-up modem.

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