CARDINALS - Belfast

Cardinals - Masquerade - 2025

From a small, dark room on the northside of Cork city - a rehearsal space that is “very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer” - Cardinals have emerged with a debut album that appropriately swings from one extreme to the other. Darkness to light. Light to darkness. Hopefulness to despair. Compassion to chaotic indifference.

A band forged through both family and friendship - brothers Euan (vocals, guitar) and Finn (accordion) Manning, their cousin Darragh (drums, tambourine, glockenspiel) and their former schoolmates Oskar Gudinovic (guitar) and Aaron Hurley (bass) - the five-piece have already positioned themselves at the vanguard of the Irish independent rock scene. And with Masquerade, they have flung off the shackles of their early influences to craft something entirely their own.

“This feels like a natural progression,” says frontman Euan. “The early years feel like a band still finding ourselves and trying different things. Whereas the album's a bit more cohesive and a little bit more sure of itself.”

Euan’s description of these songs as “soft ballads whipped into urgency out of a panicked necessity” aptly captures Masquerade’s mood; these are emotionally expansive songs, some simmering with an undercurrent of violence, cynicism or fervent discontent (Anhedonia, The Burning of Cork, Barbed Wire) others gleaming with a bright-eyed vulnerability. Crafting a record with an A-side and a B-side is a nod to the band’s collective love of vinyl, and Masquerade’s tonal shift takes its cue from a variety of contrasting influences - from Townes Van Zandt’s “soft and beautiful melodies” to heavier fare like Nine Inch Nails, Danish punks Iceage and goth-metal icons Type O Negative, as well as their previously-noted love of hip-hop.