More about: Silverbacks

Starting life as the brainchild of brothers Daniel and Kilian O’Kelly, Silverbacks have evolved over the past decade, growing in members and experience into the ferocious 5-piece we have today. Fresh from the release of their debut album Fad, we caught up with guitarist Kilian and drummer Gary to talk about their sound, the Irish music scene, and what the future holds for the band.

“When we started releasing music people were calling it so many different things, like, you know: art-punk, indie, obviously post-punk” laughs Gary. “So then we started making up more different types of things for what we could call it! But I don’t know, I feel as though we’re just kind of a guitar band. We don’t try and get too bogged down in sounding like a post-punk band or sounding like an art-rock band. We want to be able to do it all, and we don’t want to really limit ourselves. Nothing is off the table with us, so it’s kind of a nice place to be creatively.”

The band’s current line-up formed in Dublin though Gary and guitarist Paedar have since moved back to Kildare. “Kind of the base of operations is from Dublin, but everyone thinks we’re from Dublin when none of us actually are” Gary says. “Two of us are from Kildare, Emma’s from Drogheda in Louth, and Kilian and Daniel grew up in Brussels… So, you know, we all get called a Dublin band but we’re not really."

“We think Dublin is almost like a buzzword,” adds Kilian, “it’s easy to just lamp it in in one area, but, as you’ve heard, the 5 of us aren’t necessarily from Dublin, and then in addition to that there’s plenty of really good, even guitar-driven bands from other sides of Ireland, like The Altered Hours in Cork for instance, or Junk Drawer and Careerist up north. There’s plenty of really good bands from all over the island of Ireland.”

“Being in Dublin is great” says Gary, “You know, it’s cool and there’s a lot of gig opportunities, but after a while gig-wise there’s only so much you can play… it’s cool to have the scene and there’s obviously great bars, and it’s good to have the buzz and all, but I don’t think in any way that it’s necessary. You can do it without it, you know?”

With the Irish music scene really thriving in recent years, we’ve seen the success of young bands like Fontaine’s D.C. and The Murder Capital putting a spotlight on what else the emerald isle has to offer. “I think it’s been a perfect storm of why it’s doing so well now” comments Gary. “I think maybe 7 or 8 years ago there was such a heavy electronic presence in Dublin: everything felt like it was a DJ night. It was kind of primed for it to come back to guitar music... 'cause this thing is always kinda cyclical. On top of that, with Girl Band bringing out their first album, all the current bands now would have been around to watch them. It gave everyone a kick up the arse to get bands back going.”

Remarkably, Silverbacks went from watching Girl Band to working with them, teaming up with bassist Daniel Fox to produce their album Fad. “All five of us love Girl Band" explains Kilian, “but we also really liked some of the albums [Fox] had produced when we were finding our feet and trying out songs in the studio. There was an Autre Monde album that he put out and we really liked the guitars in it: we thought maybe we could use him for 'Dunkirk' because we wanted to achieve something similar with the guitars.

Then when we went in with him to record we were really happy with how it turned out… we’re already booked in to work with him again before the end of the year on album two, so we’re all really excited about that.”

Facing a number of setbacks, the band’s debut - released this July - had been on the backburner for a while. “We joke sometimes that Silverbacks are cursed a little bit” smirks Gary. “We had a couple of naïve things happen with record labels and stuff where we waited and waited… I think if we had waited any longer to put it out, we might have just went and recorded the second album and just put that out instead!”

“This version of the album has probably been ready to go since last September,” says Kilian, “but a very similar version of the album has been ready since like last May, so we’re all really, really happy that it’s out… I really think having an album to look forward to, as unimportant as it is in a global pandemic, is a really, really welcome distraction.”

“The reason why I think Fad works as a first album is it’s a wide range of our influences and a wide range of the subjects which we like to talk about in our songs”, explains Kilian. And despite their debut’s tongue in cheek title, the band have clear intentions for what’s to come. “We’re hopefully gonna be a career band, so as album releases come out there’ll be a greater understanding of what it is we’re trying to achieve as a whole.”

Until then, we are left with a thundering debut from a band on the brink of something great.

Fad is out now.

More about: Silverbacks