Turnstiles hone their craft to make best of lockdown

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Coming into March, Turnstiles were the most sought-after band on Galway’s burgeoning punk scene. The five-piece had only been together a matter of months but their charisma and identity, particularly in the live arena, was palpable and, certainly on a local level, unmatched.
They supplemented a series of showcase gigs in Áras na Gael with support slots for the likes of Imperial Wax and the Clockworks and the release of blistering, raw singles Moving Forward, Wasting Away and Tantrum.
With a host of major gigs and festival slots lined up, theirs seemed to be a particularly unfortunate lockdown but, as it turns out, the enforced break was particularly fruitful.
The evidence is in their latest project.
Turnstiles’ eponymous debut EP is set for release on January 8. Throbbing and brutal, the four tracks are cohesive in their message and arrangement. The EP screeches and screams from the intro to its opening track, Something to Die For.
It’s an emphatic but refined beginning – the group have lost none of the chaos and commotion that makes them such a beguiling live act but their attention to detail has improved. These songs are as respectful of the studio as they are the stage.
“We were already in the process of doing this EP when the last song was written,” guitarist Colm Sweeney recalls.
“When we were starting on the EP, it was the last four songs we had written so we were in a certain creative space, I feel. The last three of them were written in the same practice space. Something to Die For was written a bit beforehand but even the fact that they were mostly written in the same space, it helps them sound more similar and more cohesive.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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