NERVES CHANNEL INNER CHAOS WITH IARMHAIREACHT EP A SOUNDTRACK TO COLLAPSE
EP Review By One Sick Of Polite Music Writing
Let’s start with the EP’s title, because Iarmhaireacht isn’t just a word, it’s a warning. It’s that weird, haunted kind of solitude you get at cockcrow, when the world’s still half-asleep and you’re the only one awake, staring into the void and wondering if you were ever part of anything real. It’s not “me time.” It’s “What even is time?” It’s the kind of eerie stillness that doesn’t hug you, it interrogates you. And honestly, it sets the tone perfectly for an EP that doesn’t want to be your background noise. It wants to be the thing you hear when everything else shuts up. It should come with a disclaimer that if you are feeling emotionally fraught or suffering from any form of trauma, listen with caution.
Nerves didn’t make Iarmhaireacht, so you could nod politely and say “Ahhh yes guys, fascinating use of archival footage.” They made it so you’d feel like you’ve been emotionally ambushed in a bog at 5 am by your inner ghosts. This isn’t an EP, it’s a forensic report on rural Irish collapse, duct-taped together with grief, addiction, and the kind of ambient dread that makes you wonder if your headphones are channelling something they shouldn’t. It doesn’t play, it haunts you. It doesn’t resolve, it lingers like smoke in a locked room.
“Takes A Second” opens as a slow-panic attack, fuzzed, repetitive, before slowly screaming guitars emerge as if they can’t help waiting to blast holes in walls. The buildup is intense. The vocals creep through like they must escape a room from which they’ll emerge with no light. Doomy but self-indulgent never, and it has a hook that can barely catch breath. When it does accumulate, the entire song just explodes into frenzy, “Takes a second or two” repeats, and the guitars scorch your eardrums as clashing drums build a feeling of intensity. I can only imagine how fucking amazing this must sound in some dark underground club.
“Dirty Fingers” is unbridled rawness. I absolutely adore the intro, it’s only 08:48 am and I’m sitting in a crowded hipster coffee shop, now ready to throw a table through the window just to liven things up, I’ve been completely hijacked and taken on a journey that does not suit these beige walls and middle-class chatter. It’s the sensation of digging through the dumpster of one’s mind with grubby fingernails, which I must admit is not contrasting well with the soft lighting and freshly baked croissants. There are some crazy rhythms in this track, as if attempting to start but always running away from some severe traumatic event. The pulsating drumbeat sounds like a crime scene, whilst at the same time, you feel like you’re alone in a room with your worst memory.
“Through My Chest” is also the most cinematic song on the EP. What I mean by cinematic is that it’s like the score to that one film where everyone gets killed. Guitars shine like broken glass, singing in this kind of intrusive closeness. “I see ya, I see ya, I SEE YA” It spirals, frantic and breathless, until the repetition becomes a scream swallowed by static.
This track invades your veins like Monjaro does around the dinner table at the Kardashians. I’m frightened, not in a Norman Bates, just checked me into my hotel room way, but I’m scared because this is most probably the most emotionally devastating, electrifying EP I’ve heard all year.
“Act of Contrition” is a slow-burning EP, a track that broods on self-guilt before rolling boil. It is less of a song than it is a confession booth with faulty lights. The tension builds through reverb and restraint layers until the release hits like a cracked dam. You don’t get catharsis, you get repercussions.
“Don’t Let Go” bookends the EP as a funeral procession that got lost at raving. It’s post-rock buildups for tear-criers, ambient techno before they claim to have hay fever. It’s nasty, danceable and droney, the kind of song where everything functions at once and still utterly fails. It’s one man mopping up joy from wreckage and perhaps succeeding for milliseconds before toppling into noise.
Vintage Irish broadcast snaps, folk recordings, and podcasts are thrown randomly in as interludes, like blasted breadcrumbs. They won’t guide you anywhere because they will ensnare you. You’re not seeing through the centuries, you’re yanked through them by your feet. It’s less “cinematic interlude” and more “emotional hostage drama.”
“Any older piece of media you find talking about mental health in the west of Ireland, emigration, the slow degradation of rural Ireland or issues with drinking culture, all have relevance to modern Ireland too. A recording from 1951 talking about how lack of jobs and emigration have left working class rural people feeling forgotten and abandoned has as much relevance in 2025 as it did then”
Kyle Thornton
Lyrically, Kyle Thornton’s singing is like he’s read more Camus and not a single self-help book. Every cut is a blanket under the covers entry shouted through a rust-battered megaphone in a dark abandoned warehouse. There is intimacy, yes, but the kind you want to pitch a tent in a peat bog and wonder what ever happened to your youth.
Visually, the EP leans into Irish symbolism with the subtlety of a brick through a stained glass window. Wren boys, Ogham script, and a reclamation of culture that’s less “inclusive gesture” and more “we’re taking it back and you can deal.” It’s anti-colonial, anti-aesthetic, and anti-anyone who thinks Irish identity should be “made more enjoyable”.
In a world where nationalism is rebranded as heritage and right-wing politics dress up as tradition, Iarmhaireacht is a middle finger wrapped in folklore. Nerves aren’t here to comfort you. They’re here to remind you that the past isn’t past, and the present is just as complicit. Iarmhaireacht is a cultural reclamation wrapped in noise and fury, and I’m here for it.
5/5
Nerves’ new EP, titled Iarmhaireacht, is set to release on August 15th. The EP was produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band and follows their debut EP, Glórach, released in 2024.
