Wild-eyed Prodigy style beats, stinging diss tracks, and creepy trip hop atmospherics make Kneecap's riot of a new album a modern classic
Recorded in between stage and courtroom appearances and condemnation from politicians, Fenian is a loud and proud chronicle of Kneecap’s year of living dangerously - and by the sound of this ferocious barrage of punk rap invective and abrasive sloganeering, the Belfast-Derry tyros aren’t quite ready to make nice just yet.
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Since the release of 2024’s Fine Art and their wonderfully noisome semi-autobiographical film, the rave-rap trio of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí have faced (a failed) legal prosecution and bans from music festivals. They’ve also been censored, censured and castigated by all the right people - we even had to watch the extraordinary spectacle of a British Prime Minister intervening in the doings of an Irish rap act.
Kneecap were never going to sit idly by and watch as they were dragged through English courts and trampled underfoot by reactionary media. And in much the same way as NWA and Ice-T reclaimed the 'N word’ nearly forty years ago, the old pejorative of "Fenian" is here flown as a defiant flag of honour.
But if the righteous and riotous Fenian finds them doubling down on their social and political convictions, a reinvigorated Kneecap have also expanded their musical horizons. This fresh serving of agit-pop takes on a more sinister air that sees the trio venture into bleak trip hop terrain.
With Fontaines D.C. and Wet Leg producer Dan Carey behind the desk and guest turns from Lankum’s Radie Peat, spoken word artist Kae Tempest, and Ramallah-based rapper Fawzi. Fenian bristles with Prodigy-like bangers, wild-eyed drum and bass and Mezzanine era Massive Attack journeys into nocturnal ambience. There’s even balladry in the shape of Móglaí Bap's moving tribute to his late mother on the superb closing track, the tender Irish Goodbye.
Of course, this being Kneecap, it’s so on the nose it will leave you with concussion. There is a song called Palestine, another one called An Ra, and of course, one called Occuped 6. Celtic ambient opener Éire go Deo, which samples Fermanagh singer Róis, pay dues to torch bearers of the Irish language, and Smugglers and Scholars puts a new on twist Irish folklore. The title track highlights once again just how good Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap are as rappers - over pulsing electronica, they trade verses in a blaze of rhymes that take in everything from James Connolly to Clannad and to The Wind That Shakes the Barley and the Salmon of Knowledge.
Palestine, featuring Fawzi, hammers home what Kneecap see as a connection between the Irish Republican cause and the plight of the Palestinians: "From the west of the city to the West Bank/We won’t stop until everyone is free." It’s the kind of sloganeering that would probably attract a court order in London.
An Ra takes a similar spray can approach and skewers the colonisers’ divine right to civilise the savages. In a scathing overview of a certain kind of seamy British culture, Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap reel off a sweeping torrent of cultural references, from Lord Mountbatten, to his disgraced grandnephew, the Andrew formerly known as prince, to Jimmy Savile.
Fenian maintains its gangster rap menace and Kneecap haven’t lost their knack for Eminem skittishness and Beastie Boys gobbiness either. On Carnival, Mo Chara relives his recent legal tussles as a side show: "There’s a carnival coming to a town near you/ Kneecap versus the crown, so come here you/step up and view their attraction/circus of distractions/away from their actions is where they will steer you."
Things get darker again on the excellent Cocaine Hill (which features Gaelic goth vocals from Radie Pete) - a massive surf guitar chord looms over a nightmarish visit inside Mo Chara’s head as he struggles with drug-induced insomnia, while the sombre and haunting Irish Goodbye reveals that Kneecap have reached new levels of sophistication.
Defiant, angry and deep, Fenian is the sound of a band fighting for their right to party and protest.
