Heart of Darkness

IRISH POST-PUNK HEROES FONTAINES D.C. ARE ONE OF THE FASTEST-RISING BANDS IN MODERN ROCK. BUT WHEN THEY MADE THEIR HIT NEW ALBUM A HERO’S DEATH THEY WERE IN “A BAD PLACE”, STRUGGLING TO COPE WITH THEIR OWN SUCCESS. FENDER-TOTING GUITARISTS CARLOS O’CONNELL AND CONOR CURLEY EXPLAIN WHY THEY RECORDED THE ALBUM TWICE, WHY THEY FAVOUR UNORTHODOX PEDALBOARDS, AND WHY, SOMETIMES, A “SH*TTY” SOUND IS BEST

- Jonny Scaramanga

IT’s little more than a year since their debut album came out, but Fontaines D.C.’s lives are unrecognizable from the scrappy newcomers that began 2019. That album, Dogrel, was universally acclaimed and landed top 10 chart positions on both sides of the Irish Sea. Upon its release, they were playing pubs in their native Dublin; their last show before the lockdown was to a sold-out Brixton Academy. Anticipation was at boiling point for their follow-up album, A Hero’s Death. They narrowly lost a chart battle for the #1 slot to Taylor Swift, despite lacking Swift’s enormous PR muscle and being unable to do any promotional gigs. It’s hard to avoid clichés about whirlwinds and rollercoasters to describe such a rapid rise to stardom, but as guitarists, Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley (known to all by his surname) told us, it wasn’t easy to get here.

A Hero’s Death is a moody album, written by a band struggling with sudden success. “I think on this record we were all in a pretty bad place writing it,” explains Carlos. “We were touring loads, and far away from people we love and home. Our lives just changed really quickly. We went from being a band around town, and we were excited about everything we did but no one else was, to suddenly everyone was excited about it. We were flooded in with shows non-stop. We all became kind of sheltered and didn’t talk about how we were feeling about it.”