To promise a “classic” debut album two years before it arrives requires a special kind of ballsy gumption, but that’s what Ireland’s latest great bright hope Cardinals set out for on ‘Masquerade’. In the time since, there’s been no cause to doubt them.
The Cork five-piece have come a long way since early festival spots and support gigs with the likes of fellow future guitar icon countrymen Fontaines D.C., with frontman Grian Chatten anointing them “his favourite Irish band”. Along the way the NME 100 alumni and recent Cover stars have whetted our appetite with a solid self-titled EP and string of woozy shoegaze and skull-rattling agitated indie. Does ‘Masquerade’ make good on their offer?
Getting old-school with a proper side A and side B is a good start. Opener ‘She Makes Me Real’ captures Cardinals’ knack for sweet earworm post-punk-pop with a scratched and tortured underbelly where as good as it may sound, “it hurts beyond belief”. Choppy indie with folky accordion flourishes drive festival banger ‘St Agnes’, the self-reckoning of the slow-burning title track and the direct, open-hearted ‘I Like You’. “Don’t change your hair for me, if you still care for me,” croons frontman Euan Manning with a knowing simplicity, before the twitching cacophony of ‘Over At Last’ collapses into side B.
This is where things get real gnarly. “I know I’m not the only one who suffers,” spits Manning on the fire and brimstone of ‘Anhedonia’, bristling with the violence and anxiety that unpicks the darkness of the second half. “And I can hardly breathe, alcohol and ecstasy, and Aperol and THC,” the frontman observes on ‘Barbed Wire’ – a noxious tour of his hometown – while the shadow of Robert Smith dances over the gothy doubt-riddled love song of ‘Big Empty Heart’: “As my legs are blown to bits and I always feel shit, well with you I kind of feel OK”.
Throughout, there’s a nervous energy that speaks to life in 2026, never more so than on nauseous despair of album highlight ‘The Burning Of The Cork’, reflecting the past atrocities committed by British forces in Ireland with the ongoing horror in Gaza; a brutal history that repeats “again and again and again”. ‘As I Breathe’ fittingly ends on something of a sigh rather than a bang; taking a drag and making peace with existing on the best terms you can, given everything: “Still my heart is pure, makes me hate it all the more, I know how weak I am”.
Is ‘Masquerade’ a classic? Time will tell, and Cardinals have demonstrated the potential to grow into something more special. At the very least, they’ve made a record that’s sadly but beautifully in tune with these times and the scars of where they’re from. This is the truth of a band who have no other choice but to do this.
Details
- Record label: So Young
- Release date: February 13, 2026