Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

For fans of noisy Irish guitar bands, Petrel are something of a supergroup. Melded from members of Slyrydes, Scattered Ashes, Tayne and Squarehead, the four-piece have cultivated their own euphonious brand of post-punk while incorporating familiar touchstones.

Debut single Existing Condition arrived earlier this month, laced with abrasive, insistent instrumental lines and a more mellifluous vocal than the genre tends to produce.

For guitarist Eoin Reilly, Petrel has been a route back into music. The project arrived at a time when Reilly’s other band, Galway stalwarts Slyrydes, had been off grid for several years.

“I’m in college now studying psychotherapy; I’ve got a kid; I’m building a cottage in Sligo,” he says.

“My life is so quiet now. There was a lot of emotional stuff attached to music for me, and I hadn’t thought about it really [for a while] … It was this weird push out of nowhere.”

Darragh Winters, a student in IADT in Dublin and the brother of Reilly’s partner, asked if he could recommend a band for a run of free sessions in a recording studio.

It was an opportunity that jolted the creative side of his brain into life. Reilly thought about reaching out to various bands before realising he could assemble his own.

“Mosey, the drummer, was one of the first people I asked for sure,” he says.

“Mosey is just solid – he’s great. We’ve a good relationship and we’ve worked in projects before. The serendipitous aspect of this is my cousin Gerry [Sheil] had just left the band Scattered Ashes.

“Gerry and I are mates, and he agreed to come into the band as well. The short version is Ian McFarlane from Squarehead and Kid Karate and those bands was the last person to get involved.

“I wrote the guts of ten songs at the start. I didn’t know what style of music I wanted to do or what I wanted. I didn’t know who I was creatively anymore.

“Over Christmas, I was sending in demos that I made at home myself and when Existing Condition came in, I remember everyone was like yeah, that is cool.”

Gerry Sheil wasn’t initially supposed to be Petrel’s singer, but when he stepped in on vocals it presented a sweet contrast from the band’s more jagged edges.

Pictured: Petrel…debut single out now.