Cardinals

From a small, dark room on the northside of Cork city - a rehearsal space that is “very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer” - Cardinals have emerged with a debut album that appropriately swings from one extreme to the other. Darkness to light. Light to darkness.

Hopefulness to despair. Compassion to chaotic indifference.

A band forged through both family and friendship - brothers Euan (vocals, guitar) and Finn (accordion) Manning, their cousin Darragh (drums, tambourine, glockenspiel) and their former schoolmates Oskar Gudinovic (guitar) and Aaron Hurley (bass) - the five-piece have already positioned themselves at the vanguard of the Irish independent rock scene.

And with Masquerade, they have flung off the sh