Album Review: Delusions of Grandeur is a fine debut from Irish noise-poppers Thumper
Thumper — whose members are from Dublin, Cork, Dundalk, Limerick, and elsewhere — achieve a zen-like euphoria on 'Delusions of grandeur'. Picture: Ruth Medjber
★★★★☆
The effervescent punk-pop cranked out by Dublin’s Thumper is super-charged with contradictions.
With two drummers and a singer who belts out his lyrics as if there are rockets attached to his vocal cords, if there is one thing the six-piece aren’t about, it is throat-clearing understatement.
This is a record that kicks down the door, leaves mud all over your hall and then snatches from your hand the toast you’d just buttered.
Yet amidst the din, their debut album is full of wonky avant-garde flourishes.
At its best, it tips into a goggle-eyed weirdness that will help set Thumper apart from the deluge of groups that have come to attention in the wake of Fontaines DC.
Their signature is a sort of over-revving, three-chord bubblegum rock, that calls to mind rainy Weezer or baroque Blink 182.
Layered in with that, is a heavy metal outrageousness that elevates the LP beyond indie fodder.
Having started in the mosh-pit, Thumper somehow end up in a dystopian flotation tank; three tracks in, for instance, the listener is buffeted by 25, a galloping zinger stretched out to nearly eight minutes.
As the song rumbles on and on, Thumper — whose members are from Dublin, Cork, Dundalk, Limerick, and elsewhere — achieve a zen-like euphoria.
Can a racket have the quality of a mindfulness retreat? argues very much in the positive.
Amidst a monsoon of guitars and singer Oisín Leahy-Furlong howling like a deeply troubled Dave Grohl, the effect is Steve Reich meets Foo Fighters.
The hypnotic power of repetition is doubled down on the second number in this “suite”, 'The Ghost', where a sustained refrain is recycled over and over.
It is mesmerising confirmation that Thumper are more than a Dublin scenester affair, and that is an opening shot to cherish.
