Heed The Call

Every so often, a band emerges so fully formed, you have to wonder, “Where have you guys been all my life?” In the case of Dublin alt. rockers Alarmist, the answer is simple; they’ve been locked away in their rehearsal room, perfecting a sound that makes jaws drop.

“It was about two years before we did a gig,” says Elis Czerniak, who also performs as part of Choice Award-nominated outfit Halves. “It just took us ages. Osgar, Barry and myself were in bands together when we were 15 or 16, but we were just messing about.”
After a year’s hiatus, Czerniak & Co. formed Alarmist in 2008, along with second drummer Neil Crowley.
“It was taking some of the non-post rocky bits of our old band and creating something new,” the bassist explains. “It was quite natural.”
The band chose to take a break from the live circuit, remaining off the radar until the release of their eponymous debut EP last year.
“I remember when we started writing songs because we didn’t have enough to fill a set!” Czerniak laughs, “Never again! I don’t think any of us would want to do a show if we weren’t 100% ready, but it’s very frustrating when you just want to play a gig. We tested out some stuff at parties and then, when we played our first ever gig, we didn’t do another for months!”
Two-and-a-half years of rehearsal; I’m guessing it was pretty tricky convincing their friends and loved ones that they were actually, you know, doing something.
“It was! It was really frustrating. We had to be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll play a gig… in a couple of months’!”
Starring two drum-kits, a guitar, a bass, two keyboards, two laptops and occasionally, a clarinet, and with only four people to play them, the toughest thing about an Alarmist show is knowing where to look. The multi-tasking quartet appear so engrossed in what they’re doing, it’s impossible not to get caught up with them, even if you’re not usually prone to nerding out over compressor pedals.
“Sometimes we come out of a show and it’s like, ‘Oh no! Where did that 30 minutes go?’” says Czerniak, who plays bass, keyboards and a couple of more things besides. “Sometimes I think it takes away from it. I mean, it would be much better to jump around and rock out like Adebisi Shank do, but us? We’re still trying to deal with how to make the sound. We’d like to do both at the same time, it just takes a while.”
They’re not the first instrumental band to come out of Dublin, but their melodies are more complex than anything we’ve seen in quite a while. It’s easy to spot the influence of Norwegian jazz rock pioneers Jaga Jazzist, who Czerniak points out are the only band left on his gig wish-list, but he’s reluctant to put Alarmist in the same category.
“Jazz is such a scary word. One of our drummers studied jazz drumming for a couple of years, maybe that comes into it a little bit, but I wouldn’t say we’re jazz. Sometimes it seeps in, but we try not to let it too much because then it kind of verges on proggy.”
Genesis, they ain’t, but that didn’t stop the Dublin foursome from slapping flute, trumpet and autoharp on their debut EP.
“Barry sometimes plays clarinet on stage, but it’s tricky to get it right, especially when we’re playing too many instruments as it is! There are some songs where it got to be too much, but on recordings we have clarinet and wind instruments.”
For the EP launch in Smithfield’s Block T, Alarmist teamed their spiky tunes with some heavy duty, shapeshifting visuals, courtesy of multimedia wizards Slipdraft, AKA Daniel Staines and Sam Boles.
“I would love to have actually watched that,” Czerniak pines, “because it was crazy. I’ve seen pictures and it looked insane!”
I can confirm that the show in question was both insane and crazy, kind of like how I imagine Crystal Maze contestants feel when they’re stuck inside the crystal dome... only with a better soundtrack. The band will be recreating the effect on the road, when they head out on tour with Slipdraft in tow.
“They’re a bunch of our childhood mates and we’ve been doing stuff with them for years. Anytime we played a gig they would get out the projector, but they’re just getting better and better and better. Our music is kind of, not jagged, but strong and blocky, so I guess it suits it.”
If the trippy visuals and brash experimentation don’t hook you in, fear not. The daft song titles probably will.
“They kind of come from how we think the music sounds,” Czerniak explains. “We thought ‘Bathtime For Squid’ sounded underwater and there was a bit in ‘Carpark Showdown’ that reminded us of someone having a fight. ‘Vitamin Saturday’ was written one morning when I took a load of vitamins and was feeling a bit pumped up. It’s very much whatever comes out of our mouths during practice. I think with us, we take the music seriously, but everything else is just stupid.”

Alarmist head out on the ElevenEleven A/V Tour this month with Eatenbybears, accompanied by live visuals. Shows include Radar, Belfast (9); The Stables, Mullingar (10); The Factory, Galway (11); Mason’s, Derry (16); Crane Lane, Cork (17) and Twisted Pepper Dublin (18).