“WE’RE JUST BIG SMELLY MOSHERS” THE SCRATCH RECLAIM THE HEAVY ON NEW ALBUM ‘PULL LIKE A DOG’

INTERVIEW | THE SCRATCH by Anne Kelly

Back in 2024 on Glasgow Green, Conor ‘Dock‘ Dockerty and Daniel ‘Lango‘ Lang hinted that things for their band The Scratch were well and truly getting heavier. Having always walked the line between traditional Irish folk and heavy metal, on their third record, Pull Like A Dog, they’ve finally stopped holding back. The amps are up, the filters are off, and the sound is heavier than ever.

Nearly two years later after that first encounter, I had the chance to catch up with the other half of The Scratch – bassist Cathal McKenna and newest recruit Gary ‘Gaz‘ Regan. On the cusp of revealing their biggest and boldest record yet, we chatted about the creative chaos of the studio, their budding “family” bond with Celtic-punk icons Dropkick Murphys, and why they are finally embracing their true nature as “big smelly moshers.” From the influence of the traditional Irish Seanchaí to the adrenaline of touring, we explore how The Scratch is redefining metal for the 21st Century.

From watching them busk on the street to joining them in the studio for the new album, how has that journey of joining The Scratch been for you, Gaz?

Gaz: It’s been a great. I’ve known the lads since we were teenagers playing in the same metal scene with our old bands, Red Enemy and Hero in Error. We’ve always been close, swapping members for gigs, with a shared obsession of bands like Lamb of God and Mastodon. I’ve been watching the lads grow since the get-go, and seeing how it has unfolded for them from busking in town, watching their live streams during COVID, to being part of the band is great. When they asked me to jump on board for the tours and start writing for the new album, it felt completely natural.

Looking at the sound of the new record, it feels like those two worlds – the metal intensity and the traditional storytelling – have really struck a balance that embraces the metal. Does this version of The Scratch feel like the sound you have been striving to achieve?

Gaz: The sound has naturally drifted into heavier territory, I don’t know if that was my doing, but the connection was definitely there from the start. I think Lango wanted to, and especially Dock. I’m not sure if you wanted to go the heavier route, Cathal?

Cathal: That shift toward a heavier sound had been coming for a while, but Gary joining felt like the final piece of the evolution. After spending a decade in the metal scene with Red Enemy, the lads originally tried to move away from those tones, like “No, we can’t do that, we’ve already done it to death.” Eventually, that resistance started to dissolve. With Gaz coming in, there was this fresh influx of heavy energy, and we realised it was time to stop fighting our true nature: at the end of the day, the guys are just big smelly moshers. We really leaned into the “switch” on this record. The rule was: if you’re going to go heavy, go all the way; if you’re going to go folky, keep it heartfelt.

Lyrically, the new record feels like the most mature yet. Does Lango’s writing come from a personal perspective, storytelling or a combination of both?

Cathal: He’s always spotting a character or an event – anything funny or sad that catches his eye. It’s kind of like sitting in a smoking area with him while he’s giving you a spake about something. I never really put it together before, but that’s one of the bigger folk influences; you know, that Seanchaí thing of gathering folklore from overheard conversations and the people you meet – he does a lot of that.

Gaz: Even like if you’re sitting in a pub, yapping away, talking absolute shite, you’ll see him with his phone out, texting stuff, taking notes for some sort of purpose. I think for the new album he’s probably dived a bit deeper. I’m kind of speaking for him, because he’s not here, but when you listen to tracks like‘I Hope Is All Forgiven’, I think he kind of went in on himself.‘Mother of God’ is another pretty personal one.

Cathal: I don’t want to speak too much for him while he’s not here, but the writing is definitely becoming more personal, heartfelt and closer to the bone. He’s a much deeper thinker than he’d like you to believe. He’s actually quite a spiritual person, and I think he taps into that when he’s writing. He can produce something incredible in the space of an hour and leave the rest of us wondering, ‘Where on earth did that come from?’.

When we chatted to the other lads at TRNSMT, they mentioned that you had already started writing new music, is the music we hear on Pull Like A Dog that same music, evolutions of those ideas or have you started from scratch – s’cuse the pun?

Cathal: Yeah, the new album is a bit of a patchwork. There’s songs that we’ve been working on for forever. On one end, you have songs like ‘Ringsend‘, which Gaz brought when he first joined; that’s one that’s been knocking between him and Lango for forever. On the other end, there’s ‘Horsefly’, which was written of the course of a week over the summer. We had already written a bunch of tracks but felt the album’s pacing was off, so we went back in to find that missing piece of energy, building the track from a few chorus chords Gaz had brought to a jam.

That upheaval of when Jordon left and Gaz joined sort of forced us to reset a bit and look over everything we’d written. We ended up revisiting old, dusty jams and Lango has this habit of pasting tracks together – he’ll take lyrics, riffs, or breakdowns from songs that never made the cut and paste them into new sessions when the rhythm, beat or connection matches. So it’s really just a bit of a patchwork.

Songs like‘Roses n Poses’, ‘Gladrags‘, and ‘Pull Like a Dog‘ just fell out of us with a raw energy we hadn’t felt in a while. We’d moved away from that “wigging out” rehearsal room style toward more laptop-based style of songwriting – which I still love too, but Gary’s arrival brought back that instinctive, busking-band energy that we really needed.

Gaz: If I don’t have a time frame; without a deadline, I tend to just faff. But I remember the first jam session we had after I joined the band and I had this riff, then Dock would have another riff and the songs were falling out of us. By the end of the day we had wrote ‘Roses n Poses‘. Even though I was stressed out my box trying to learn the set , we were somehow writing the new record between all that.

It sounds like the band is at its best when things are moving quickly. Is that natural spark something you’ve been trying to bottle recently?

Gaz: We recently spent a week in a Dublin Mountains where we rented out this Airbnb. It was a beautiful spot and we just kind of we landed on something that we really liked and just put a mic in the middle of the room and just jammed it until we kind of had it like it, the bones of the song there and like somewhere essentially writing for the next album. But it’s like I find when we’re all kind of on the same wavelength and buzzing off the same thing. Like that’s that’s the exciting thing for me.

When it’s not forced, a song like ‘Roses n Poses‘ can come together in half an hour. You might tweak the demo or cut a few bits later, but that initial, unforced spark is what really drives the writing.

Once the songs were written, did you head into the studio with a clear roadmap, or was the recording process as instinctive and raw as the songwriting had been?

Cathal: No, no, no. We thought we were very prepared, but it turns out we were weren’t. After an intense start to the year and some personal upheaval, we ended up recording the bulk of the album in a three-week “fever dream” during a gap in touring. We got the majority of it down in that initial burst, then spent the summer patching up the parts we’d glossed over while we were mixing it.

You recorded the album with John “Spud” Murphy. He’s known for a very specific, expansive sound – did his approach push the band into territories you hadn’t explored before?

Gaz: Spud is amazing at tapping into things you wouldn’t normally see or hear. In the studio, just past the desk, there was this room at the end of the live room that we called “Spud’s room of toys”. He’d get an idea, run off, and come back with a handful of pedals to throw in front of me.

Cathal: It was wild. We had a bucket of stones to make Lango’s cajon sound like a snare drum; we were hitting pearls off kegs and cracking whips in front of the mic. At first, you’re just sat there like, “What is going on here?” but he has a way of pushing you to grow without it ever feeling forced. He’s incredibly facilitating – he just puts all his technical knowledge toward whatever vision you have.

That’s some really interesting experimentation happening there! What were the weirdest ways you ended up capturing those sounds?

Gaz: We’re big on octave pedals, and he made them sound so massive you couldn’t even tell what was playing. On ‘Ringsend’, he had me use a Suzuki (a Japanese lap steel) with a bow, and then he told me to do the same thing with a screwdriver – just hitting all the notes and banging the strings. He told me he wanted it to sound like an “exploding star.” I played it 50 different ways, layering bowed notes, and if you listen closely to the end of the track, you’ll hear this subtle, twinkling texture.

Cathal: There’s a spooky “horror film soundtrack” climax at the end of ‘Gladrags’, that came from that same energy. You end up volleying off Spud because of how excited he gets. He’s just there bopping away, and honestly, that becomes the goal- you just want to make Spud bop.

Turning to touring and performing live, you have spent a lot of time on the road with Dropkick Murphy’s. How does a Dublin band connect with a legendary Boston band like them?

Cathal: It started about two or three years ago when they were playing Dublin. We put ourselves forward for the support slot and managed to swing it. We actually brought Ken (Casey) a Dublin jersey and a sliotar with a little message written on it, just as an excuse to go up and talk to them. It struck a chord immediately; they were so sound. Even after that first show, Kenny came into our green room just to thank us for playing. That led to a three-week European run, which I think was a bit of a tester to see how we’d get on. They’re a massive operation, but it feels like a family.

That “tester” clearly went well, considering you ended up on their latest album. How did that collaboration come about?

Gaz: We were playing two nights in Vienna with them during the last tour, and Kenny just walked in and asked us to be on the record. They had a studio booked during the day and wanted us to put down some vocals. We were sitting there thinking, “Oh my God, we’re actually on a Dropkick Murphys album” – and it turned out to be two songs! They wanted somebody who could speak Irish. Luckily, Cathal is fluent, because I would’ve been absolutely screwed.

The collaboration ended up going both ways, didn’t it. How did their bassist, Kevin Rheault, end up on your track “Pulling Teeth”?

Cathal: Lango originally wrote the entire rant for ‘Pulling Teeth‘ but during the tour, we found out Kev had been obsessively transcribing the lyrics in a notebook to learn them. Then one day he came up and was like, ‘your fellas fucking learnt the rant’. He started joining us on stage to perform it at the end of our set, and his energy was so insane that we knew we had to get him on the actual record.

After spending so much time with a band like Dropkick Murphys, what have you learned about the reality of touring and long-term survival in this industry?

Gary: They are pure professionals – they don’t skip a beat. Ken is a total OG; he’s been there since the very beginning, and his advice was simple: just keep playing. He told us that if you just keep getting in front of people, eventually, they start turning up in bigger and bigger numbers. Hearing his stories from over the years was incredible. When a guy like that sits down for a chat with you, you just shut up and listen.

Cathal: The biggest lesson for me was realising that you are the master of your own destiny. It’s easy to feel like so much of the music industry is out of your control, but the Dropkicks taught us that you’re the boss of your own environment. You dictate the energy on the bus and the atmosphere on stage every night. If I want to still be playing music when I’m 80, I have to prioritise being happy and healthy. They showed us that you have the power to decide exactly what that lifestyle looks like.

You have a string of UK dates coming up next month. What can fans expect from the new live set?

Gaz: We haven’t finalised the setlist yet, but we’re treating the opening legs in Australia and the UK as a testing ground. We’ll be trialling new ideas to see what sticks, so fans at those early shows will be getting something that no one else has yet.

Cathal: More of the same shite (laughs). We don’t want to be one of those bands who don’t play the hits, like ‘just play the songs people like!’ So we’re trying to balance that but with more focus on live improv. I’ve always been inspired by bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, especially that Slane Castle opener where they just jam for four minutes before the first track. We’re pushing to bring that same “jam room” energy to the stage. You’re definitely going to get the new material, but you’re getting it with that raw with the spark that drove the whole record.

What began as a group of metalheads busking on the streets of Dublin has evolved into one of the most formidable and eclectic live acts in the country. With the release of their latest record, the band enters a new era and a fearless dive into heavier, more experimental sonic territories. Guided by the avant-garde production of John “Spud” Murphy, the band has traded the simplicity of their busking roots for a “fever dream” of distorted riffs, found-object percussion, and deeply personal lyricism.

Pull Like a Dog is out Friday 13th March via Music For Nations / Sony Music Ireland – order now

The Scratch hit the ground running with a limited instore tour this week before returning for their full UK tour in April – remaining tickets on sale now.