By Erin Wright
Dublin post-punk outfit Sprints returns with a foreboding and overwhelmingly aggressive project for 2025. After a critically acclaimed studio debut in 2024 with Letter To Self, Sprints follows in the footsteps of Irish contemporaries such as The Murder Capital and Gurriers on their second studio release with All That Is Over, a project that portrays the world of a modern Irish woman, filled with all of the rage that you would expect from the quartet.
Vocalist and front-woman Karla Chubb provides a great dichotomy of vocals, going from a classically yelled and angered post-punk delivery to some downright beautiful passages on songs like "Better". An immediate standout to me is the drum tone, the deep resonance and low tuning mixed with the dry cymbals portrays a sense of dread that you rarely get so accurately conveyed by drum tracks.
The droning guitars featured on songs like the opener "Abandon", "Rage", and the aforementioned "Better" set the tone excellently, while they dip into sounds that are reminiscent of Amyl And The Sniffers and Lambrini Girls on tracks like "Descartes", "Need", and "Pieces".
The tracks here do not stay as blistering and heavy forever though, as numbers like "To The Bone" and "Desire" take things in an acoustic direction, providing a much needed moment of reflection. All in all, Sprints come through with another standout in their catalogue, proving that their future is not only bright, but now.
All That is Over by Sprints is out now via Sub Pop. Details below too.
[Photo: David Willis / Film 7]