Their debut Letter to Self captured that in bursts of cathartic punk fury, a record that sounded like it was written on the run, between hangovers and existential reckonings. It was enough to catapult them from Dublin clubs to European tours, and in 2024 they became one of those rare breakthrough bands who felt both deeply local and completely universal. But what do you do once the breakthrough has happened? For Sprints, the answer is not to consolidate but to burn it all down.
All That Is Over is a second album forged in disruption. The departure of original guitarist Colm O’Reilly mid-tour could easily have derailed them; instead, Zac Stephenson joined the fray and the band seem to have treated instability as fuel. The pressure-cooker chemistry from the rhythm section (Sam McCann on bass, Jack Callan on drums) sounds more locked-in than ever, while Stephenson’s guitar brings new destruction, tenderness and brutality.
What’s emerged is a record that snarls, stretches, buckles, and constantly threatens to collapse in on itself, only to flare up again more violently. Unlike on their debut that sometimes sounded hemmed in by its own intensity, this follow up occupies more space, paradoxically making it heavier, stranger, and more resonant.
You hear it immediately in “Abandon”. It creeps rather than explodes, the band allowing air and dread into the room before Karla Chubb’s vocal cuts through with that unshakeable line: “I don’t grow old / I grow unrecognisable.” It’s a lyric about change, but also about survival, refusing to become what the world expects, even if it means shapeshifting into something more jagged. That sentiment runs like a spine through the record. Chubb’s vocal is knife-sharp yet weary, her delivery pulling as much from Patti Smith’s bruised poetics as from the full-throated ferocity of early PJ Harvey. It’s the sound of someone refusing to shrink even as the ground beneath them shifts.
“Descartes”, the first single, is perhaps the clearest
statement of intent. Over serrated guitars and a rhythm section that
seems perpetually on the verge of collapse, Chubb flips the
philosopher’s famous dictum into her own mantra, “I speak so therefore I
understand.” It’s a song that thrums with frustration at vanity and ego
in a collapsing culture, but it’s also a declaration of what art is for
Sprints: not a career move, not a distraction, but a way of making
sense of the mess.
What’s striking is how much further the band pushes their
sound here. “Rage” lurches with a cowboy-goth swagger, all dust and
menace; “Better” tilts into shoegaze, building a wall of sound that
collapses under the weight of its own emotional heft. “Desire”, the
closer, stretches their ambition to its limit, conjuring Radiohead-like
atmospherics before dissolving into something rawer, stranger, and
entirely theirs. Even the straightest punk cuts like “Beg,” for
instance, feel less like genre exercises and more like pressure valves,
releases of tension in an album that thrives on it.
If the sound is bigger, the themes are darker. Much of the
record was written against a backdrop of war, ecological collapse, and a
daily news cycle that reads like dystopian fiction. Chubb doesn’t shy
away from that dread; she channels it into lyrics that oscillate between
the apocalyptic and the intimate. A breakup after eight years, the loss
of a bandmate, the grind of becoming professional musicians, these all
feed into songs that blur personal pain with collective anxiety.
What saves it from nihilism is its defiance. Chubb has
spoken openly about the misogyny she faces as a frontwoman, the way her
body and voice are scrutinised in ways her male bandmates are spared.
Rather than diminish her, those pressures become ammunition on “Need” ,where she spits her contempt back at the audience, daring them to reduce
her again. That spirit permeates the record. For all its darkness,
there’s a refusal to collapse.
Sprints came in on amongst a wave of Irish post-punk bands
with noise and conviction on their side, but what makes them compelling
is how unguarded they are. There’s no detachment here, no cool irony. All That Is Over
is direct, furious, sometimes messy, but always alive. It sounds like a
band using every ounce of their strength to stay upright, and in that
struggle they’ve made something exhilarating, becoming unrecognisable in
the best way.
