In The Pit: Gurriers

Live at Cyprus Avenue, Cork

By Sophie Lee . Founder . 21/12/25

There are some gigs you remember vividly, and others you remember in fragments. Moments of noise, flashes of light, a voice cutting through the room. Gurriers fall firmly into the latter category.

By the time Gurriers took the stage, the room was already loud with anticipation.

They opened with Erasure, their recent single. From the start, frontman Dan Hoff wasn’t just singing, he was screaming, but in a way that felt controlled and intentional. Not chaotic for the sake of it, but like something that needed to be said loudly.

The guitars stood out straight away. Mark MacCormack and Ben O’Neill brought two distinct sounds to the stage - sharp, almost screeching tones that felt closer to an alarm than a riff. It was abrasive and jarring in the best way, constantly keeping you on edge. At times it felt overwhelming, but that’s where Gurriers thrive. There’s an unmistakable Dublin post-punk thread running through it all. Hoff delivers his lyrics in a way that recalls early Fontaines D.C., not just sonically, but in attitude. That feeling that Hoff isn’t performing at the crowd, but telling them something directly, his accent grounding every word.

Des Goblin was a proper headbanger moment. Loud, relentless, and physical. The kind of track that doesn’t give you much choice but to move with it.

One of the most striking moments of the night came during Sign of the Times. Hoff came practically into the crowd as the music behind him dropped back, leaving his voice exposed. In that quiet, you could really hear him. The track’s slightly gritty bassline crept in first before the rest of the instrumentation kicked back, and live, that tension hit hard.

Top of the Bill sent things into full chaos. The stage lights went wild, matching the urgency of the track and the band’s intensity. It felt frantic.

They closed with Nausea, ending the set on an uneasy note. The volume, the noise, the sheer wall of sound made the room feel almost claustrophobic, nervous and overwhelming, but in the best possible way. It wasn’t a comfortable ending, and it wasn’t meant to be.

The current Gurriers lineup sees Dan Hoff on vocals, Mark MacCormack and Ben O’Neill on guitars, Charlie McCarthy on bass, and Pierce Callaghan on drums.

Even if the finer details blur together, the feeling lingers. Gurriers aren’t a band you neatly remember song by song, they’re a band that feel capable of reshaping what modern Irish post-punk looks like.