Suffice to say that post-punk is nothing new to these shores. Dozens of hot prospects have raised their youthful heads since since Gilla Band’s rip-roaring debut album Holding Hands With Jamie in 2015. This is no complaint, mind. The quality of output from this niche scene has been nothing short of astounding, not just in quality but in difference of approach.

Gurriers are a more than welcome addition to the fray. Forming in 2020, suitably named for an outdated but quaint Irish term for a lout, ruffian or street urchin, the Dublin-based quintet’s debut Come And See is a razor-sharp retaliation on modernity.

With 11 tracks clocking in at just over 40 minutes, the album’s lyrics, among other things, addresses the end of the world, emigration, disenfranchised youth, violence and religion. Sonically, the band bend their high-energy, guitar-based approach around a multitude of styles ranging from noise, shoegaze and straightforward punk rock, all at once angular, dissonant yet melodic and hook-laden.

Kicking off with ‘Nausea’, Come And See is by no means a friendly listen. A blistering track, it’s a good indicator for how the rest is going to go. A barrage of guitar noise and motorik drums gives way to frontman Dan Hoff’s distinctive syncopated, percussive bark wrap its way around lines like “Online, rewired our minds / Feeding us a masochistic hotline / Their design imprinted on the mind”. The message is loud and clear – Big Brother is watching, but we’re the ones holding the cameras. This is immediately followed by the bouncy ‘Des Goblin’ and the seething yet danceable ‘Dipping Out’, the former a lamentation of online avatar culture, the latter an ode to youth migration, a tale as old as Irish history itself.

That is not to say that the band are one-trick ponies. The band enter more ethereal territory on the cavernous ‘Prayers’, with Hoff exploring the extent of his vocal capabilities, giving voice to a fictional pope in existential crisis. These stylistic elements are played with further on the haunting ‘Top Of The Bill’, which boats a soaring glide guitar hook inn lieu of a chorus until the song’s final act, Hoff’s desperate howl a stark but arresting juxtaposition (“My body’s a temple but ruined by the state / And heaven’s on the wrong side of the road”). This becomes an almost croon on the closing, reverb soaked title track.

Granted, Come And See is chock full of old tricks – the roaring My Bloody Valentine-via-Gilla Band double-stops, the relentless, pounding drums, the ranting vocals, the delay/reverb soaked arpeggios. But the trick is in the detail, the contrast of overt political and social alienation against shimmering guitars one moment or scuzzy riffs the next. The sequencing lends a lot to the collection as an album, too – the back four starting with ‘Top of the Bill’ through to the album’s end runs from sublime to anxiety-inducing (‘Sign of the Times’ and the wickedly flippant ‘Approachable’) and back again, easing the listener into the vitriol before setting them back down gently again.

As far as debut albums go, Come And See is about as urgent a statement of intent as you’re likely to hear. An album that neither pulls its punches nor spams its attacks. Blending disparate sonic elements, careful pacing and righteous political fury, it’s a vital album for these trying times.