Since the release of their 2024 EP Glórach, West Irish noise-punk group Nerves have rapidly built a fierce reputation for their uncompromising live shows. Now performing as a four-piece, the band’s sound has grown in both confidence and dissonance. With sold-out headline shows across Ireland and support slots for The Jesus Lizard, Maruja, and HMLTD, their April single ‘Dirty Fingers’ earned early praise from Kerrang!, The Line of Best Fit, Hot Press, and Louder Than War.
The band is getting ready to release their new EP Iarmhaireach on August 15th. Lyrically, Iarmhaireacht is intensely personal yet deeply rooted in Irish history and culture. Through the use of archival samples – from old TV footage to folklore and podcasts – the EP draws a haunting parallel between past and present struggles in Ireland, a comment on history repeating itself.
Ahead of the release of Iarmhaireach we asked the band about their main influences…
Black Eyes – S/T
This is definitely an album that heavily influenced the way I wanted to push our music in terms of density and rhythm. When I first heard this maybe a year or two ago we were already leaning into making music that relied on intricate, almost electronic-esque drumming as the backbone of the songs, but hearing this record, particularly tracks like ‘On the Sacred Side’ and ‘A Pack of Wolves’ kind of gave us a certain amount of validation that this is something that works perfectly with noisey guitar elements and pushed vocals. The record has an industrial quality to it despite the fact that its recorded super raw and that all comes from very innovative playing styles.
When Eoin and Ryan joined the band I put together a playlist of reference points for them, ‘On the Sacred Side’ was near the top of that list and got regular rotation on the aux during lifts to and from rehearsal. I’ve always loved bands on Discord records but finding Black Eyes was a flash point where I realised there was a band whose style fit with a lot of the ideas in my head and that there was something to build upon here.
ØXN – CYRM
We all love Irish traditional music and some of the more modern droney incarnations that it has taken, but this record feels like the most modern, innovative approach to reinterpreting these old dirges. Aside from that, the record has this absolutely concrete tone to it, it’s very easy to fall into the world that its building while listening to it and that’s definitely something that i wanted to replicate with this EP. We wanted to create as thick an atmosphere and that really effected what songs we chose and the ways we chose to link them together.
For Those I Love – S/T
This album has been one that has never strayed far from my mind since i first listened to it. At the time, I was grieving the loss of a very close friend of mine, so the narrative of this project hit me harder than any album had for a long while before that.
While a lot of the songs on our previous EP Glórach had more of a direct relation to the themes of this album, the influence of his lyrical style can still be seen all over this new EP, and the way he used vocal samples in the songs and threading the project together heavily influenced our own use of sampling. An absolutely inspiring listen still, I’m very excited for his next album.
