When we spoke with bassist and vocalist Shawn Legaspi and drummer and vocalist Willow Leavey of the Dublin-based alt-metal duo SHALLO in March 2025, they were gearing up for their debut EP. Now, in November 2026, the EP is finally being released.

“It was actually meant to be my final year project,” Shawn says of the EP. “Instead, we did [their previous single] ‘Betrayal’; we recorded ‘Betrayal’ in BIMM, and that came out of it. The only reason it wasn’t the EP was just because of the time constraints.”

“Yeah, there were the time constraints, but also, the Raining in December EP [for whom she used to drum for] was recorded in the exact same month as we recorded ‘Betrayal’,” adds Willow. “And neither of those things were for my college; that was for Shawn’s college project, and the Raining project outside of college. So, I was so fucked for a time! [Laughs]”

While the SHALLO EP would get worked on piecemeal in the background for the rest of the year and into the next year, Shawn and Willow kept busy elsewhere. Explaining her time, Willow says, “I work as a barista, I play drums and sing in SHALLO, I play bass and arrange in Porge, and I write music myself, as well. That’s what I’ve been up to. I’ve also been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.”

Willow’s solo project has had a few gigs over the past year, but she is yet to record and release her music. Describing her solo project, Willow says, “It’s sort of like whenever I come up with any idea for music, the instrument that I first think of kind of determines where it goes.

“Like, if I’m playing bass and come up with something, chances are, it’s going to Porge; if I’m playing drums and come up with something, chances are, it’s going to SHALLO; if I’m playing guitar and come up with something, chances are, it’s going to be a song for myself. Just in terms of how it sounds, you’ll have to see! There is absolutely no time pressure on that, because I have no idea when that’s going to be coming out! [Laughs] But I’m working on it!”

“Apart from SHALLO, I’m in a band called wetpaint, formerly known as BedHead,” Shawn says. “I am the bass player. We finally have a very stable line-up; I’m not sure if we did the last time SHALLO was on the podcast.

“That’s kind of why the name changed as well, because we were in and out…Mostly through drummers, but then we got one. His name is Brian [Doyle]; he’s great. And Glenm [McMahon] and Cian [O’Dowd] are the other guys; vocalist and guitarist, respectively. That music, compared to SHALLO, is a bit punkier, I guess, because it’s what Glenn’s vocal style lends to.”

Despite their demanding schedules, for its members, SHALLO will never just be an obligation to fit into a schedule. “It reminds me of continuing friendships and relationships after school, or college, or after you leave a workplace where you met someone where you had that thing connecting you,” Willow says of the band.

“If you’re in college with someone and you see them multiple times a week, it’s relatively easy to maintain a friendship through that, because you’re constantly seeing them. Whereas, whenn you leave college, you are actively choosing that person over and over and over by continuing to talk to them, continuing to hang out with them.

“It kind of reminds me of that, where we have no, quote-unquote, ‘need to’ or ‘reason’; we just both really like it, so we both want to do it all the time. It’s a huge part of my life, personally. Like, I’ve been a drummer for eleven years, and I’ve played in a couple of bands before SHALLO was formed. SHALLO, for me, feels like where I was meant to end up as a drummer.”

“For me, in terms of balancing it, Willow and I have been friends for longer than this band has existed,” adds Shawn. “And the band is just us; there’s no one else doing this. […] It’s just, like, an extension of our friendship, basically. We’re doing the things that we like to do, but together.”

This Saturday, SHALLO will release their first EP, which serves as an accumulation of their history thus far. “There’s no theme that went through it; it’s just kind of ‘The Best’ of the songs that we have written,” Shawn says of the EP. “We kind of separate our songs into different eras. We’d call this era kind of the more hard rock/alternative rock side of things, and, more recently, we’ve been going in much more of a metal direction.

“But, obviously, when your songs aren’t recorded yet, there’s still so much time for it to evolve. Even after recording, the songs will change; we actually changed ‘Curse the Rain’ in literally the last rehearsal, a little bit. But we’re kind of like, ‘This is the first era of SHALLO songs,’ and the ones that we’ve consistently played over the years.

“There are songs that have come and gone that we don’t play anymore, songs that we have revisited, but these are the best of the five that we have from this timeframe. That’s also why we called it a self-titled EP, because there’s no connecting theme between them that made any other sense than, ‘This is us. Welcome to our music. This is who we are.’”

The five-track SHALLO EP will feature rerecordings of three previously released songs, “Betrayal,” “Mirror,” and, for the first time as a studio track, “Coin”, plus one unreleased track, “Curse the Rain.” The lead single off the EP, “Search Within,” was released back in October.

“Think back to 2022,” Willow says of why they chose that song to lead the EP. “Shawn and I are in our first year of college. The band we had been in in school had kind of stopped, and we were both musicians, both friends going to the same college, and we had performance exams and stuff, and Shawn showed me a song he had written on bass.

“We had a rehearsal, just the two of us, and he showed it to me, and it was the chorus riff of ‘Search Within,’ and I was like, ‘That’s really cool. That needs double-kick, and I play double-kick on drums, so we should do that song. We should write that.’ And we had another song, called ‘Queen of Deceit,’ […] which we repurposed into a more modern SHALLO song, but, to me, ‘Search Within’ feels like the first SHALLO song, so when we were talking about which of the five songs to put out as the single […] both of us at the same time were like, ‘Yeah. “Search Within.” Yeah.’ There wasn’t any discussion; it was just like, ‘Yeah, that one.’”

To celebrate the release of their EP, this Saturday, SHALLO will host a launch party of Sin É, Dublin, with support from the Dublin prog-pop-punk band Kyral and the Dublin noisy punker duo Träšhbag. “Honestly, some of the best music you’ll hear in Ireland,” Shawn says of what to expect from the gig. “Not even from us, to be honest! [Laughs]

“Like, we have loved Kyral and Träšhbag. We’ve played with Kyral before, in Fibbers, I think, and we’ve seen them at other times than that, and we just know the guys in Träšhbag, and their music is so good. Honestly, I’m slightly nervous about playing after them!”

“I remember when we were putting together the EP, we talked about, ‘We want to do a release gig. Who would we want as openers?’” Willow recalls. “And we talked about a good handful of bands we knew, and one of the earliest ones was Kyral. Then, very quickly, we were like, ‘Yes! We’d definitely want Kyral.’

“And Träšhbag is a more new band, in comparison. I think in the past handful of months, they released their first single, ‘My White Van.’ Incredible song! And we’ve known the people in Träšhbag in college for years, and when they released their first single […] I listened to it, and was like, ‘This is genuinely one of my favourite songs that I’ve heard in a long time!’ […] We were like, ‘We’re both duos! We have to stick together!’ I’m so excited just to go to the gig to see Träšhbag and Kyral!”

SHALLO’s latest single, “Search Within,” is out now. Their debut self-titled EP is out on Saturday the 7^th of November. You can keep up with the band through their Linktree.

SHALLO will host a launch gig for their EP this Saturday at Sin É, Dublin, with support from Kyral and Träšhbag. Tickets are available here.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.