If the crying heart artwork adorning Fontaines D.C.'s fourth album wasn't a clear enough indication that Romance was never going to be a record of sweet, pure and unabashed love songs, then the opening minute of its title track serves as a brutal, chilling wake-up. Opening with a creepy descending mellotron riff, crashing stabs of distorted synths, and sinister bone-rattle percussion, it finds vocalist Grian Chatten quietly crooning "Into the darkness again" before proceeding to get darker still. "Deep in the night I confide, that maybe my goodness has died" its second verse lyric runs, adding "I pray for your kindness, your heart on a spit."
Love you too babe.
It's no wonder that conventional ideas about love and romance are blurred, twisted and contorted here, for this is also an album about transformation, and growth, and about negotiating challenges as once-safe-and-secure ground shifts constantly beneath one's feet. The Dublin quintet have always been a creatively restless band, but where their superb debut album Dogrel was imbued with the spirit of Shane MacGowan and early '80s post-punk, their first album for XL Recordings (also home to trail-blazing artists such as Burial, Radiohead, M.I.A., and Casisdead) is a startling bold reinvention, drawing inspiration from dark-wave electronica, experimental hip-hop, '90s alt. rock, and - who saw this coming five years ago? - the menace and melancholia of Korn and Deftones, two bands that guitarist Carlos O’Connell has fallen back in love with in recent years.
