Kneecap: Fenian album review – Explosively energetic
Where Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap go, controversy invariably follows. With third album Fenian, Ellie Carr finds them maturing musically but no less confrontational
It started as a whisper and reverberated through the Glastonbury crowd as a demand. ‘Free Mo Chara, free free Mo Chara,’ they chanted in a call and response with Northern Irish trio Kneecap in their now infamous 2025 set. At this point, Mo Chara, aka Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, was up on terrorism charges for allegedly wielding the flag of Hezbollah, a proscribed organisation in the UK. Keir Starmer et al condemned them. The fans lifted them as heroes. Seriously, what did the British state expect? Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí, the tricolour balaclava-toting, openly republican, unapologetically hedonist, Irish language hip-hop trio known as Kneecap, could not be banned.
‘Free Mo Chara’ (along with ‘free free Palestine’ and ‘fuck Keir Starmer’) was the chant that followed the band that year, including at Glasgow’s Hydro in November, where I sat with my family, in between a taps-aff lad shouting ‘Up The Ra’ and a couple who asked politely if we minded them standing in the second half as ‘it’s gonnae get more ravey now’. Taps-aff guy was an outlier, a random bam, and the atmosphere was electric, never dark.
After a year-long case, described by Kneecap as a witch-hunt, charges against Mo Chara were recently dropped. What a time to launch an album. Enter Fenian, big brother to concept album Fine Art, courtesy of producer Dan Carey (Fontaines DC, Wet Leg, Kylie): musically more grown-up, no less confrontational. With two tracks pre-released (the industrial beats-powered ‘Smugglers & Scholars’ and defiantly political punk-rave ‘Liars Tale’), the album is a faultlessly produced fuck-you to the UK establishment.
Righteous anger courses through the dancier tracks’ fiery beats and throbbing energy. The progression is clear on ‘Carnival’. A dark satire on the circus surrounding the legal case, it mixes chants of ‘free Mo Chara’ with the voice of a plummy English judge (‘Mo Chara, you stand accused’) into an unexpected Massive Attack-style trip-hop soundscape.
Title track ‘Fenian’ reclaims the insult, and plunders acid house distortion and rave bleeps to launch a new Kneecap anthem: ‘F-E/F-E/F-E-N/I-A-N!’ If there were limits to early Kneecap beats, tracks like ‘Big Bad Mo’ correct course. Again, expanding musical boundaries, this is Chemical Brothers-like, all melodious swells and Balearic house piano breakdown. The real surprise comes with songs such as opener ‘Éire Go Deo’ (Ireland Forever), a haunting track and a reminder that the trio will still chat Irish, in this case over squelchy acid house and hypnotic female vocals. The vibe continues with standout track ‘Palestine’, featuring Fawzi. Kneecap trade rhymes and generational trauma with the Palestinian rapper in a keening song that goes beyond slogans. Similarly ‘Irish Goodbye’, with Kae Tempest, is a soul-searching rap: ‘I’m on first-name terms with the Crisis team’. It’s a tender exchange between the lads and the lyrical poet-rapper. Such collaborations elevate this album and reflect the push towards solidarity that gets overlooked when you take the expletives and ket references at face value.
This is further explored in ‘Cocaine Hill’ where Kneecap regular Radie Peat returns on a whacked-out, woozy track narrating the dark side of hedonism. A new sound but still the voice not just of those who grew up in the aftermath of The Troubles, but of disaffected and disenfranchised youth (and yes, middle youth) who see Kneecap as a Northern (Irish) star. Even if that passes you by, these are banging tunes. From Woodstock to rave culture to Kneecap, you can’t ban that energy, and it pulses through Fenian’s veins.
Fenian is released by Heavenly Recordings on Friday 24 April.