Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Dublin four-piece Ten Hail Marys have been a formidable presence on the east coast over the last two years, releasing a string of impressive singles and familiarising themselves with their home city’s gig circuit.  They released Faults I May Have at the start of January – a debut EP and a sign of early evolution for a band still in its developmental stage. Evocative and littered with imagery, its tracklist championed the expansive, centrepiece guitar riffs that have long populated the group’s live set, while also tapping into something looser and more atmospheric, particularly on closing track Echoes.

Ten Hail Marys take their Faults tour to Galway’s Róisín Dubh for A Modern Movement, on Wednesday March 5. When frontman Adam Cullen started the project, he carried older, previously written songs into it with him. Though the writing process has grown more collaborative, that trend of tracks sticking around for a while continued for the EP, most of which was written a couple of years ago.

“I like to write on my own,” he says. “The collaboration of the full band probably comes within arranging the song. It is quite even input from everyone. But I would write the chorus and the lyrics on my own most of the time and then I’d bring that to the band. We’d all discuss arrangement ideas and come to a common conclusion of what we’re all happy with.”

Like many emerging guitar bands in the last couple of years, Ten Hail Marys have drawn comparisons with bands like Wunderhorse and The Murder Capital. It seems a lazy association.

The influences Cullen mentions range from Deftones to Depeche Mode, and there is an American undercurrent that few young Irish bands could claim.

“People love pigeonholing new bands,” Cullen says. “I don’t know if it’s post-punk anymore – the post-punk pigeonhole was definitely there for a long time, but I think it’s starting to go away. Wunderhorse – everyone thinks everyone sounds like Wunderhorse these days if you have a guitar. It’s very frustrating.

“I don’t think we sound like Wunderhorse. I think there’s more of an American rock and roll aspect to us. At times, we do sound like Wunderhorse and those other bands, but I’d like to think we’re outside of that bracket… I don’t know why you’d try to be a band that already exists.”

Pictured: Ten Hail Marys (from left) Adam Cullen, Joe McGuirk, Jake Murray and Dillon Doyle.