M(h)aol: Attachment Styles review

Seven years aft their exciting, abrasive debut azygous Clementine, Irish post-punks M(h)aol (pronounced male) person yet released their debut album, Attachment Styles. It’s a bid of fearless moments that centre connected intersectional feminism and reclamation of power, underpinned by a soundtrack of clattering drums and jagged, dissonant guitars.

The artwork for Attachment Styles

The consequence is simply a grounds that is arsenic vulnerable, triumphant and cathartic. “I’m conscionable nan dumb bitch that near nan statement pinch you,” vocalist Róisín Nic Ghearailt sing-speaks connected spicky opener Asking for It, which unflinchingly tackles rape culture. As nan way builds, nan guitars go heavy and gluey and Ghearailt’s sound rises to a roar: “My full life won’t beryllium defined by you.”

It’s nan heaviest way connected an medium wherever astir of nan songs build from bare bones, nan instrumentation disjointed and primal, allowing a connection of self-acceptance to dominate. Bisexual Anxiety and Femme push backmost against “the achromatic and achromatic abstraction of monosexuality” – you tin perceive Ghearailt’s eyes rolling arsenic she sings: “I should person trim my hairsbreadth disconnected erstwhile I knew I was queer / It would person made it easier connected everyone here.” Closing way Period Sex provides a lusty, heavy-breathing highlight, Ghearailt savouring nan refrain of “I want to make a mess” pinch coquettish, gleeful defiance arsenic a kaleidoscopic guitar ebbs and flows. It’s a brilliantly confrontational ending – “If this opus makes you uncomfortable you should inquire yourself, why?” nan set inquire astatine nan commencement of nan song’s video – to an medium that makes bully connected each nan accomplishment and fiery wit that M(h)aol first hinted astatine 7 years prior.