Details: There's a lyric burnt into "Abandon" - the slow, searing scorch of an opening track that begins Sprints' gargantuan second album All That is Over - that cuts to the core of the incendiary Dublin quartet right now: "I don't grow old / I grow unrecognisable". Not only does it kick the door down to a record that wrestles with the horrors outside and the strengths within, fighting for the necessity of art and hope and love amidst an incomprehensible world on fire, it also winks at Sprints' own thrilling trajectory. Having underlined their status as one of the UK and Ireland's most exciting breakthrough bands with their universally-acclaimed 2024 debut Letter to Self, vocalist and guitarist Karla Chubb, bassist Sam McCann, drummer Jack Callan and new guitarist Zac Stephenson return for their second act as an evolved entity: stronger, sharper and fully assured. "I think we came out of 2024 as quite literally different people and a completely different band to how we entered it," says Karla. "There was a lot of growing and a lot of work on myself, and in the background we did a lot of work as friends and on being there for each other as a band. Letter to Self was so riddled with self-consciousness and a need to prove myself in a very male-dominated industry that really held me back in a lot of ways. And now, on this album, I could not give less of a fuck." The groundwork that Sprints laid down with their debut marked them out as a musical triple-threat in the alternative landscape: a visceral live band capable of selling out increasingly sizeable tours, earning five star reviews (NME, DIY and more) and an Irish Choice Music Prize nod, while landing themselves on BBC Radio One. Throughout 2024 alone, they toured the UK, Europe and America twice, ending the year with a celebratory, sold-out show at London's O2 Forum Kentish Town. All That is Over lays out it's cards in a landscape of duality and disparity, anger, ambition and a thousand feelings in between. It's title is taken from a lyric at the centre of "Beg," an uncompromising slice of propulsive punk that seeks the cleansing of new beginnings. Written on tour buses, in soundchecks and very much in real time, it's an album set against the backdrop of a litany of atrocities - the war in Gaza, the wildfires in LA, Trump's executive order denying the rights of trans people - that sees Sprints trying to make sense of a society gone mad. The band again worked with producer Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, this time at the residential La Frette studio just outside of Paris. The playfulness and spark that rings through the record shows both the band's wealth of ideas and willingness to break fresh ground, but also a new, hard-won confidence. Sticking two fingers up whilst doubling down on the visceral spirit of fierce artistic honesty that's always been at the heart of the band, All That is Over finds Sprints entering their second chapter with nothing left to hold them back.

Sprints - All That Is Over (CD)