GURRIERS - Nobody’s Coming To Save You

As chance would have it, on Friday 25 September, at exactly the same time – midnight, of course – Gilla Band and Gurriers both released their respective new albums. Within the circuit of Dublin's new post-punk scene, these are the band that started it all back in 2015, and the one that has most recently proven capable of generating real hype: masters and pupils, inspirers and successors. Fate seemed to tie everything together even further: just the day before, U2 had announced a new album, after a nine-year wait, like spectators watching the contest over who will one day claim the crown of the city's leading band. Fontaines Dc currently look like the main contenders for the title, but the whole of Dublin keeps proving itself to be bursting with extraordinary talent and music that's never anything less than interesting.

"Nobody’s Coming To Save You" is the second album by Gurriers, arriving exactly two years after their acclaimed debut, at least within the European underground circuit. It opens with the sumptuous title track, also chosen as the first single, out for a few months now. It's about as close to early Fontaines Dc as one could expect, a proximity that stands as a welcome confirmation (“Nausea,” the excellent opener of "Come And See", also drew on the very same imagery), arriving – another coincidence – just as the band led by Grian Chatten is about to release its own hotly anticipated new record, moving toward more commercial territory. To be clear, resembling another band doesn't necessarily mean copying it: in most cases it's the result of similar backgrounds, roots and listening habits, which filter through into each band's songwriting. “Nobody’s Coming To Save You” is a great track, perhaps the best on the record, followed by nine more songs, some of which were already aired live during last spring's tour.

The sense is that the 2026 incarnation of Gurriers aims to consolidate its position while also charting new stylistic paths to pursue, offering on one hand a furious strain of dance-punk with a whiff of Yard Act (“Party Lines”), and on the other a certain closeness to britpop of the Verve/Ashcroft variety (“Pins”), a few more nods to their older siblings Fontaines Dc (“Nothing Happens Twice”), and repeated injections of powerful, nervy electricity (“Shades”, “Today Is Not Enough” and, even more so, the devastating “Waiting For Fisher”, which edges right up to the brink of hardcore), all handled with a steady hand thanks to production work from Mark Bowen (guitarist of Idles) and Loren Humphrey (previously behind the desk for Geese).

If "Come And See" made its mark through an explosion of generational rage and post-punk urgency, “Nobody’s Coming To Save You” represents its natural evolution, darker, bleaker and more self-aware. The vocal delivery of singer Dan Hoff grows even more dramatic, moving between scornful spoken-word passages and visceral screams of pure frustration at a world adrift. And no one is coming to save us, as the title makes plain. Anxiety, precariousness, isolation, collective apathy, social collapse, political cynicism, emotional paralysis: themes steeped in a sound often wrapped in industrial-noise spirals, which also look to the Model/Actriz experience (“Drones”).

The final part of the record brings its two most enveloping tracks, ready to ripple through the second half. These are the power ballads “I Wish I Was” and “Crybaby”, which hint at intriguing possible futures. Placed here, as a provisional epilogue, they form the best possible bridge towards a tomorrow that's still entirely unwritten. Given that plenty of oracles have long been declaring the end of this rich post-post-punk season, the Gurriers of the 2030s could well be among the first to deliver developments that are, for now, entirely unpredictable. Ready to take pole position, determined to keep the evergreen rock banner of Ireland flying high.

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07/10/2026