False Lankum

Just over three years after the RTÉ Choice Music Prize-winning The Livelong Day, Dublin's Lankum return with their fourth full-length release. False Lankum was recorded between January 2021 and June 2022 in week-long bursts across Dublin – in Killiney, Orlagh's Hellfire Studios and Guerrilla Studios in the inner city. Despite the nomadic recording process, the record has been sewn together as if set down in one take, linked by a series of fugues – snatches of abstraction and discord that more than live up to the concept. Opener ‘Go Dig My Grave’ leans into horror tropes with added funereal flourishes, while ‘Clear Away in the Morning’ translates wistfulness into remorse on the Gordon Bok classic. One of three original tracks on the album, ‘Netta Perseus’ sees a saccharinely sung melody mangled into a gorefest of drones, drums and strings – it's the kind of song you listen to with your entire emotional palette.

Lankum have always tinkered with an alchemy of drone, metal and experimental elements applied to traditional folk, but on False Lankum they seem to be pushing this to its logical extreme, lending their sound a new volatility that excites and unsettles in equal measure. They’re so good. They’re just so fucking good.