We just love the strutting confidence, the wisdom of taking on history, and the wearing of chain mail. Always a winner. Cardinals don’t just release singles — they drop artefacts. After weeks on the road, the Cork five-piece return with ‘Barbed Wire’, a track that swaggers like it owns the street but mutters something darker under its breath.
Frontman Euan Manning sketches the mood:
“It’s very much inspired by the history of our city and the Gaol house that stood on the south gate bridge many years ago, lyrically I had hoped to evoke images of silhouetted city walls and security fences. Sometimes aesthetics can carry a song from its inception to its completion. Kevin Barry’s novel City of Bohane also served as inspiration for a gothic re-imagining of Cork.”
Cardinals are quickly becoming Ireland’s next big guitar export — the kind of band that makes you wonder what’s in the water in Cork and whether someone should bottle it. Their sound lands somewhere between fog-soaked romance and indie-club adrenaline: atmospheric enough to feel cinematic, but scrappy enough to still smell like practice-room carpet. It’s confident, unbothered, and buzzing with that specific youthful delusion that, honestly, often turns out to be correct.
Their new single arrives with a stark, black-and-white video from Xander Lewis — all sharp angles and shadowplay, like a lost reel from some forgotten Irish noir. It’s the fourth drop from Masquerade, their debut album arriving February 13th via So Young Records. Recorded at RAK Studios with Shrink, the record plays like a séance between romance and ruin. Side A is all soft light and big feelings. Side B opens the curtains and lets the cynicism in. Goth if goth grew up near a chipper.
Cardinals aren’t just a band — they’re practically a family tree: brothers Euan and Finn Manning, cousin Darragh, plus longtime co-conspirators Oskar Gudinovic and Aaron Hurley. They’ve already wormed their way into Netflix (House of Guinness), EA Sports (Skate), and onto stages that should, by rights, be slightly intimidating — from Finsbury Park with Fontaines D.C. to Boston with The Pogues — but somehow, they make it all look like an after-school activity.
They’re releasing this thing in every format imaginable: Rough Trade Galaxy vinyl, artist exclusives, CD, cassette, the obligatory Australian edition because of course Australia has claimed them. Tours are stacked too — Europe in November, UK & Ireland in March, Salt Lake City in May, for whatever reason.
Masquerade isn’t just a debut. It’s Cardinals building their own gothic universe, stitching Cork’s damp streets into something mythic and slightly dangerous — the kind of record that feels like it might follow you home.
