Dublin psych-pop powerhouse THUMPER return with blistering new riff fuelled single ‘The Rip‘ on Fri 22nd Aug. The track is the second of a series of singles across 2025 leading to the release of their sophomore album which follows debut Choice Music Prize nominated Delusions of Grandeur which was an epic introduction to the band’s psych-drenched rumble which juxtaposes walls of distortion with saccharine melody and unabashed hooks.
The song essentially details a night so consumed by anxiety and consumption that it can’t acknowledge that something special is happening between two people. Only brief glimpses of tenderness punctuate the lyrics, and while the song acknowledges how self centred the narrative is, it does not use it as a ‘learning moment’.
“In all that I have ever dreamed, I’m at the centre spinning.
Woke up, riddled with unease. But no – it’s roped me into you.”
Tomorrow August 22nd, both THUMPER and lead singer Oisin Furlong Leahy’s solo project anamoe drive will release alternate versions of the song ‘the rip’. This is the first time that the writing process for a song has crossed over between both projects. At first I thought it was an anamoe drive song, then it was transformed into a THUMPER song and it became its own beast. Afterwards it occurred to be that there was no reason I shouldn’t document both sides of the coin – hence the two versions.
In a way it’s the perfect song to articulate both aggression and tenderness, maybe in triangulating both moods you can work your way back to the feeling of that night.
The song was recorded with producer Rian Trench in rural Donegal, in a cottage that we converted into a studio. We built a control room in the sitting room, and ran cables into the various bedrooms for guitar amps, even using Alan’s van to house the bass amp outside (as the volume inside the house was making the fillings in our teeth come loose). The double drums were then recorded in Attica Studio in Donegal owned by Tommy McLaughlin ( Soak, Villagers, Ailbhe Reddy). There was no signal, no wifi, no distractions – just friends making music together. We were listening to a lot of DIIV and Wednesday at the time, and we were lucky enough to rope in Alex Ferrar (engineer/producer of Wednesday,MJ Lendermann, Angel Olsen, etc) on mixing duties.’