Comprised of Vincent Liu on guitar and vocals, Eoin Kinahan on bass, and James McCabe on drums, Raining in December are a trio that have been kicking around the Dublin music scene for the last year and a half, enjoying slots in most of the city’s hottest clubs.

Mixing elements of metalcore, nu metal, and J-rock, the band’s aim is to inject Dublin’s metal and rock scene with a dose of something strange and unexpected but fresh, enjoyable and memorable, like accidentally finding [Redacted] in your insulin.

This can be heard on the band’s debut single, “restart,” which was released today. Last month, Post-Burnout spoke with a mostly hungover band via Zoom, where they discussed their background, music, hopes, goals, etc. Here it is:

____________

The first thing I was going to ask, quite simply, the band has been around, I think, since December ’22, according to the press release. I was wondering, how did the band start and how do you guys know each other?

Vincent: We know each other since the first year of college, I think? The first year of college?

Eoin: Pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vincent: And I was originally in a band, in a metal band, for a bit, and that was slowly sizzling away, and, in the meantime, I was like, “Eoin, do you want to start a band?” and Eoin was just like, “Ah, sure! Why not?” I think Eoin was just trying to be in a band, as well, and he just was [like], “Yeah, why not?” And I was writing music at the time, as well, with my metal band at the time, and then the metal band faded away and I was like, “OK, well, I have some songs.” I think I had, maybe, one song ready to go, and then I had two riffs there, or something like that. And I don’t think James joined until, like, maybe around February or March [2023], around that time. That was when we had the exams, and James was originally not meant to be in the band; he was meant to just be a session worker because he was so busy. He was already in a band at the time that was pretty decently popular at the time – or, locally, anyway – it was pretty decent. He was already around, doing gigs and stuff like that, really, so we were just like, “Oh, he’s probably not going to join us, so let’s just take him for a session for now.” And then, one rehearsal later, he was like, “Yeah, can I be in the band now?”, and I was like, “Great! It’s cheaper for me to pay you!” So, I just took it. I just took it.

When you guys got together, what did you find was the common overlap in terms of musical taste, or what kind of binded youse together, I guess?

Vincent: I guess we all just liked metal music. Like, we were all influenced by some sort of different subculture of metal. Like, I’m in that kind of Bring Me the Horizon, Bad Omens, kind of like LOATHE metalcore subculture, and stuff like that. I don’t know how Eoin and James would describe it, though. [To them] How would you describe your stuff, then? Like, the kind of metal you listen to?

James: I would say hard rock, sort of metal. Like, genres aren’t my thing, so I would listen to System of a Down, and Slipknot, Linkin Park, all that kind of stuff. So, nu metal was the stuff I kind of liked. And then I just…[The rest of his sentence is mostly inaudible, but he mentions listening to and liking new music as a result of playing in bands]. Is my audio coming through, alright, by the way? [Everyone confirms] Cool. I’m on George’s Street, by the way, or Dame Street. [He moves his camera around to reveal that he’s in the café of the Centra on Dame Street]

Vincent: Oh, Centra? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You’re doxing yourself! [All laugh] Eoin, for yourself, then, what kind of music were you into?

Eoin: For me, I’m on the heavier side, anyway. Alter Bridge and Mark Tremonti are sort of my rock. I don’t stop bringing up Mark Tremonti; he’s such a legend to me. I’m mainly a guitar player – bass is my second instrument – so, I got a ton of Tremonti stuff on the guitar, so that would be for my main stuff. I’m into post-rock and synthwave, as well, so I’ve got quite a big umbrella of stuff that I take from.

Vincent: I think the main takeaway is that we all like breakdowns, because a lot of our songs have breakdowns, now that I think about it. [Laughs] That’s a common theme, actually. If you want a theme: Breakdowns. [Laughs] A lot of our songs have breakdowns in them!

Actually, when you were going to BIMM, did you find it accommodating for the sort of music…? Because this is something I’m interested in, because I didn’t go to BIMM myself, but I interview a lot of people who have, and I’m always interested to find if they found BIMM accommodating to the kind of music they wanted to make. How did you guys find that, I guess?

Vincent: Eh, sometimes. Sometimes BIMM accommodate hard rock. Sometimes.

That’s generous of them! [Laughs]

Vincent: Yeah. Sometimes! But I think, for BIMM, you have to be exceptionally good to do any rock stuff, like any hard stuff. I mean, if you do traditional rock ‘n’ roll or modern rock that’s kind of popular nowadays, so maybe like…There’s a new band that was playing on [the BIMM showcase] Live & Lyrical, called Yes Chef!, that were really cool. They’re like that modern rock stuff that’s absolutely fantastic. That’s absolutely the new wave of modern rock, I think, that they’re doing. They’re really, really cool. They’re a very cool band. I don’t know how to describe them at the moment; no bands that I can think of. But it’s quite hard in BIMM, I think. It’s quite hard. I think all of us here have tried to do our rock stuff before, but I think – just going back to the point – it’s really hard. You have to be really, really good. Like, your songs have to be perfect. But BIMM is very, very picky about who they choose to play at their gigs, anyways. It’s very hard. Actually, saying that, we are playing a BIMM gig soon, aren’t we? [Laughs]

Eoin: We are, yeah!

Vincent: We are playing a BIMM gig! We are actually playing a BIMM gig soon! Yeah, we’re playing for our graduation, I think. That’s what’s happening. Is that what that is, yeah?

James: Yes.

Vincent: Yeah, I forgot about that. We’re playing that soon. So, maybe we’re not that bad! Maybe we’re not that bad of a band after all, lads!

Eoin: Awesome! Vinny, I think you should clarify what you’re drinking there!

Vincent: [Holding up a Japanese whiskey bottle with clear liquid inside] Oh, no, it’s just water; it’s not vodka, lads, don’t worry! It’s actually just water! This used to be Japanese whiskey, right? But then I was just like, “This is such a nice bottle; I don’t want to waste it,” so I just have it. [Laughs] It’s nice; I’m just not going to waste it.

I wouldn’t mind if you were drinking whiskey; that’s your prerogative!

Vincent: Oh, Jesus! Eleven o’clock in the morning! [Laughs] That would be horrible.

I’m not one to judge! Yeah, Vincent, what I wanted to ask was, you were mentioning that this band was born as your previous band was fizzling out. I was wondering, I find, having been in bands, once they die and you’re kind of looking to start a new thing, there’s a great sense of freedom in that, where you’re kind of like, “Oh, shit! You know, I don’t have to be stuck to the parameters of this band.” I was wondering, how did you approach writing music in this project versus your previous one, and what was the difference between that project and this one?

Vincent: I feel like, for my last project, I was more of a guitar player rather than a songwriter, and I had more of an engineering role in that band more than anything, so I didn’t do that much writing; I probably did more occasional lead stuff and maybe suggestions of what things should happen. I wouldn’t call myself a songwriter in that band yet, I would be more just suggesting stuff and seeing what the other songwriter liked at the time. Yeah, you’re absolutely right; when I started this band and I started being creatively free, it was really hard, because, obviously, I was writing songs and I didn’t have Eoin or James yet at the time, so I was like, “Does this sound good?” I had no one to bounce back at the time, so it was really, really weird until, obviously, now, [we’re] a band. But, yeah, I like this more, because that band was a lot more like Alice in Chains vibe, Korn, a bit of Slipknot, a little bit of Bring Me the Horizon – that was because of me; I love them too much. And, obviously, my main inspiration for Raining in December is way different. We’re leaning more on that kind of post-hardcore, shoegaze, kind of Japanese/Asian kind of vibe. I think the band that really started this was a popular Japanese band – well, kind of-ish – called Ling Tosite Sigure. They’re very cool Japanese people that really inspired me when the band started. And then I’ve been trying to incorporate the metalcore sound to that, as well. That felt really cool, seeing how songs are working. It sounds good, finally. Like, back then, it didn’t sound good to me, but it’s happening now, so it’s very different from my previous band. It sounds good, lads!

Actually, could you talk about composing for metalcore music? Because, as I was listening to your debut song, “restart,” I really enjoyed it, but I was like, “How the hell do you actually write a lot of the nontraditional instrumental parts?” [Laughs] I don’t know how to describe it, but I think you know what I mean. The kind of synthy parts.

Vincent: Oh, the guitar. Yeah, the synthy bits; I absolutely know what you mean. Yeah, the synthy stuff was because, the band that I was just talking about there, he uses that same pedal that I use at the moment, and he has that really cool organ effect, and I was just like, “Why not use it?”, and it always sounded really intense.

Oh, shit! So, sorry, it was just an effects pedal, was it?

Vincent: It was just an effects pedal. That synthy stuff was an effects pedal.

Oh! I thought it was a postproduction thing! Sorry. [Laughs]

Vincent: Yeah, yeah, no, it’s just a pedal, and then I have overdrives on my boards as well, where it just stacks and makes it sound more aggressive. So, “restart,” was really…When I first played it, I was trying to come up with anything with that sound. I was like, “OK, this sounds really intense, so why not do a build-up to it, just strumming, and it just sounds crazy?” So, I was like, “Let’s do that,” and then that just kind of happened. So, that kind of intro/breakdown, with the strumming bit and then the double-time bit, I don’t know where I got that from. I think I probably got inspired from my old band, because we kind of had a long, suspended, intro chord thingy, and I’m just like, “Why not just go for it? Just strum it?”, and then it just sounded cool and then it just happened. The main riff was inspired by a song called “Hysteric phase show.” That’s by the Japanese band, the Ling Tosite Sigur band. They have that very poppy kind of vibe, so I was like, “Why not make it sound a little bit more emo-sounding?”, to not make it a musical term. Like, how else can I say it? Like, “Harmonic minor-ish?” But, like, I’ll just say, “Make it more mean!” So, that’s what I tried and it kind of worked out, and then I showed up when we were doing a rehearsal one time, and then James and Eoin were like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool!”, and I was like, “Yes, sir! And I don’t even have the effects on that yet, bro! Just you wait!” And then the metalcore influence, I don’t know. I didn’t listen to any other genres until thirteen, so I was just a full-on metalhead. I was a full-on metalhead, didn’t listen to any genres but metal, until maybe fifteen/sixteen when I started listening to more poppy stuff. More like…do you know [the Irish electropop musician] EDEN, by any chance?

Um-hum.

Vincent: Yeah, so I started listening to him a lot, and that’s when I got really interested in production and electronic stuff. And I guess, in the back of my head, I always wanted – even if I did my pop stuff or I did my rock stuff; if I was going to do my pop stuff or rock stuff – I wanted some sort of metalcore element, like heavy elements. So, like, it just kind of happened. I guess it was always just in me. It’s weird to say that. The thing is, with that breakdown, is that the intro – the break where it’s just the guitar and then it goes into the full band – the intro thing, I came up with that, but then James was like, “OK, that’s cool. Do you want to improve on it?”, so then he added another beat to it on the upbeat, which made it more fun. So, that’s where he got that System of a Down/Slipknot kind of vibe from that. So, it’s weird. It’s weird because I have the metalcore thing, but the lads brought their own kind of vibe to it, as well. So, I don’t know. It’s weird. I don’t know, I’m just rambling! I’m just waffling, lads!

And Eoin and James, for you… – I’d like to get your opinion – when it came to hearing the stuff that Vincent wanted to do, what was the entry point for you guys, where you were kind of like, “Yeah, this is something I could work with”?

Eoin: So, the first song Vinny ever brought to me was our song “don’t forget about me.” It’s probably one of our slower songs, Vinny, isn’t it? Like, it’s pretty slow.

Vincent: It is slower. Yeah, yeah.

Eoin: But it starts off, it’s sort of like chill guitar, chill drums and chill bass, just sort of vibing, and then the chorus kicked in, and that…I fully forget where I was going with this, but just the way it kicked into the chorus, for me, that’s when I knew, “I’m joining this band! Whether Vinny actually wants me or not, I’m getting in on it!” Em, what was your original question again, there? Sorry…

Yeah, I was just asking, for you guys, what was the draw for what Vinny was doing?

Eoin: OK, yeah, I suppose that kind of unfamiliar…like, it’s not the most Western music. Like, you don’t hear the J-rock influence everywhere, especially in Dublin; like, there’s a billion full-on shoegaze bands and people in that genre. So, I think doing that more unique stuff – again, bringing in [influences] from Asia – is something you’re not going to get everywhere. It’s very unique and I think it makes us stand out, and I think…[The background noise from James’s audio cuts in] Oh. No, go on, James.

James: I was just going to say, basically, the same here on my end from what Eoin said. When Vinny sent the [Inaudible], I was like, “Yeah, this is cool.” And then, of course, when it hits the breakdown, it kind of reminded me of stuff from the late ’90s/early 2000s. Kind of like the style of, say, Resident Evil’s end credits kind of music. Have you ever played Silent Hill 2?

Yeah.

James: So, that was it, then. I was like, “I kind of like this a lot,” so I was like, “You know what? I’ll do it. I’ll join. This is going to be weird, man.”

That’s cool. So, it was kind of the horror video games…the survival horror video games from the late ‘90s which resonated with you?

James: Yeah.

Eoin: We have…

Vincent: It wasn’t intentional; it just happened.

Eoin: I don’t know, Vinny, if we’re going to use them for actual shows, but for our performance exam coming up for our final year at BIMM, we have little interlude tracks, and I did one of them up that’s pretty Resident Evil-inspired. It’s like very close to the Save Room Theme…

Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eoin: …from the remake of the first Resident Evil. It’s got that sort of washy, ambient synth going over it. But, I think we could fit it in a show, Vinny. I reckon we could…

Vincent: Oh, yeah, no. A hundred per cent. We definitely should, we definitely should. We definitely should, yeah.

I was going to say, I hope you don’t take any inspiration from the Director’s Cut music, from the PS1 version. [All laugh]

James: Oh, Jesus! Oh, God!

Eoin: If we want to ruin our career, then maybe, yeah.

Vincent: Yeah, I don’t know about that one, boss. I don’t know about that, mate.

Just completely fuck your shit up! [All laugh] [Editor’s Note: For the uninformed who are wondering what we’re talking about, enjoy!]  Also, I wanted to talk about – with “restart” – again, what I really loved about it was that it’s just high-octane energy throughout. It runs for two minutes, thirteen seconds. Just, in, out. Really keeps the energy going. Are your live shows like that, too – just constantly keeping people energised – or do you kind of – as you were mentioning, having the slower songs – do you do the rollercoaster approach, where it’s like, go really fast, have a moment to build, and then go really fast again? How do you approach your music, in terms of a set?

Vincent: I think we try to tell a story with the band, or at least I try to tell a story with the band. Obviously, as every band [does], they start their show, they always play their heavier stuff first, like their fastest and most energetic stuff first. We normally play two fast songs then we go on to the song that Eoin and James were talking about – that Resident Evil kind of vibe, that slow, ambient stuff. We love to do that stuff, just to bring it down a little bit. And then, “restart,” we’ll start playing, because we always love to do a slow song – because “don’t forget about me” ends in a big, huge, loud noise wall – and then we just like to tune up to “restart,” and we’re like, “We’re getting loud again, guys! Just get ready!” [Laughs] So, we like that…exactly what you said, we like that rollercoaster. I think it’s better as a show because I think all of us have been to a gig where it’s just screaming loud and you’re kind of bored. Like, it’s just the same thing, again and again. You’re just bored, you want to move on. It’s kind of boring. And I think we always knew that there needs to be some sort of downtime. Even in our songs, we’re like, “Some songs just need a bit of a down and are brought back up,” but especially in our setlist, we’re like, “This needs a break. We need a break. Just something different. We can’t just be screaming or [giving] high-octane energy all the time.” We always had that in the back of our mind, being like, “OK, no, we can’t do this.” Like, we’re always making sure that it tells a story and it flows well. I think how everything goes smoothly, how the sound goes smoothly, is very important to how I want us to sound, and I think we all kind of know that’s a thing as well, subconsciously.

I also want to ask, as you were mentioning about the J-rock influence, I do think it adds a real sense of uniqueness in the Dublin music scene, in particular. Do you find people are receptive to it? Because you guys have played all over the city, like the big venues, like Fibbers, like Workman’s, like Sound House, and The Grand Social, and stuff. I often find, in a lot of ways, that those venues used to be kind of segregated by genre, in a lot of ways. Like, you know, Fibbers was always known as the rock bar, and there were the indie clubs, and there were the hip-hop clubs and stuff, but I think those barriers are dying, thankfully. I think anyone can just play anywhere, and it’s not weird. Do you guys find when you’re doing stuff that’s different or off-kilter, that people are like, “Oh, wow! This is fresh! This is new!”, and are receptive to that, or how do you find the crowd reception to what you’ve been doing?

Eoin: I was surprised when we played our first gig, which was downstairs at Whelan’s, I’m pretty sure.

Vincent: No, Workman’s. Workman’s. Workman’s Cellar.

Eoin: Downstairs at Workman’s. I was surprised by the reception of it because I think most of the bands there would’ve been a bit of rock, but, you know, a lot of singer-songwriter kind of stuff, and I was like, “Oh, no! We’re way too heavy for this! We’re not going to be perceived [well], at all!” But people were moshing, they were vibing at that first show, and that gives you a lot of confidence, I think, to sort of really go all out in your performance.

Vincent: To add on that, I think all of us were not expecting to get paid or even see five people. That Cellar got filled up!

Eoin: Yeah!

Vincent: Like, it got full, and we were just like, [Pretending to sob] “What is happening? It’s not normal! What’s happening?!” It was crazy. That was brilliant.

I like the idea of all those different acts having one sound engineer that has to kind of [All laugh] figure it out!

Vincent: Oh, I bet the engineer was shitting himself! Like, “Oh, my God! Everything is in the red! Oh, my God! What is happening?!” [All laugh] Yeah, going back to the point of how you think people are going to react, I think at every single gig that we’ve played, everyone has asked, “Do you have somewhere where we can listen to your songs?”, and then we’re like, “[Winces] No, not yet!”

Eoin: [Laughs] “No, not yet!”

Vincent: Not until rece…and now, obviously now, we have a single coming out now. We’re going to be like, “You can presave it! We have a QR code!” It was just like, “Let’s go! We have a single, finally!” So, people were like, “OK, easy,” because we’d just be sending them a Spotify link and everything because it was so much easier. Because I genuinely do not think…Like, we’ve played how many shows? Like, ten shows, maybe, around Dublin? How many shows have we played? Not ten, actually.

Eoin: I think just under ten. Maybe eight. [Editor’s Note: This interview was recorded in April. It may have changed since then]

Vincent: Yeah, it was something like that, and at every single one of them people have been asking about our Spotify. Seriously, every single one of them have been asking about our Spotify, and it’s not even just one person that we know, it’s actually strangers that walk up to us, like, “D’you’ve a single?”, and we’re like, “Nope! It’s not ready yet!”

I actually want to ask, so there obviously is an appetite to hear you guys. What made you choose “restart” as the debut?

Vincent: I think I chose “restart,” mainly because when I brought that song up…obviously, I wrote that entire song, but when I wrote that song, I was doing it section-by-section. They were just sections of songs. And then when I brought it to the lads in the rehearsal room, and they were bouncing back ideas to me,  “Oh, why don’t you do this and do that?”, and then we were kind of like, “OK, that sounds really cool. Let’s just do that, let’s try that.” And then, after that one rehearsal, when the song was “finished” – I didn’t write the finished lyrics yet – that felt like a Raining in December song. Like, it felt like each one of us – even though I was the “songwriter” –  it felt like all of us tried something with it, and it sounded like a Raining in December song. Like, I don’t know how…it’s really cliché to say that, “It sounds like us,” but that’s all that I can say. I hate to say that, but it sounds like an “us song.” Then, like I said, bringing it back to what we said earlier, we all have an aggressive vibe to it, and I think that really captures us being very, very aggressive, but also sounding very much like us, I think. I think we sound kind of good; I think we sound pretty OK-ish on that single. And, em, yeah, it just felt like a Raining in December song. I was like, “Oh, that’s so good,” and I was like, “Lads, let’s do ‘restart.’ ‘restart’ is just so good,” and everyone was like, “Yeah, true,” and, also, it’s the most well-produced, as well, because [Laughs] I started adding things to it, and I was like, “Lads, what about this? What about that? What about all this?”, and they were like, “Yeah, this is good.” OK, you know originally, you know the claps in that song, right? Eoin and James didn’t actually like the claps originally, but when we went into the studio to record it, they were like, “OK, that’s pretty good.” [All laugh]

Eoin: We got the sleigh bells added in there, as well!

Vincent: We got the sleigh bells in there! Oh, it was so good! It was the most Christmassy hard rock song ever! It’s so funny! But, yeah, I love that.

How many layers ended up in the final project?

Vincent: How many layers? Oh, Jesus! I don’t know. Um…there must have been over twenty. Like, dude, over twenty. Like, there was a lot of…because drums took up a lot, vocals not that much, but then guitars and ad-libs on guitars, and a lot of extra production stuff, like filters and stuff like that, and then different busses. There was just a lot. There was a lot of [Laughs] work that…there was a lot of preproduction, then a lot of postproduction after we were done recording it. It was a lot of work. It was fun, though. [Laughs]

Did you guys self-produce or did you work with an external producer on it?

Vincent: So, I did all the producing, myself, for “restart,” and then, afterwards, I got my friend – who actually taught me producing, mixing and mastering – I sent them off to him to basically make it sound good, so that I’d have an idea of the spirit of the song, of what I want, and he was like, “OK, I’ll just pretty it up for you.” So, he did most of the heavy lifting on the sound of the drums, how intense the sounds of everything [are], but the tonality of it is kind of designed by me, because I have a vision of how that song should sound, and he, like I said, just prettied it up and mastered it. It sounds great, he did a great job. His name is Petr [Šajgal], I call him Peter – I forgot his Instagram, sorry – but he’s great, he’s great. He’s fantastic, he’s fantastic. Great friend, great everything, he did a great job on the single. Really, really happy with it.

I’ll put a link in when the article goes up.

Vincent: Yep! Thank you so much!

No worries. And I guess one final thing I’ll ask is, if you guys were thinking of doing a…I assume, at some point, an EP or an album? As you were mentioning earlier, with the live show you have a lot of consideration for how it moves, basically. How each song compliments the last, and the highs and the lows of how people feel throughout. How do you feel about making a larger body of work like that? Like, it wouldn’t just feel like a random compilation of songs, there would be consideration for that. Do you guys think about what a full-length release or even a four- or five-track EP would look like?

Vincent: Eoin, do you want to give it a go? I feel like you wanna say something.

Eoin: We spoke about this recently, actually, myself and Vinny. I think the plan is for “restart” to open the EP?

Vincent: Eh, yeah. Something like that, yeah. Because it’s the first single, that’s what I was thinking. That’s why.

Eoin: Then we had two songs that work really well together, they’re just sort of like the start and the end of some particular part of a story, I think. It might have been “don’t forget about me” and “bleeding hearts.” “bleeding hearts” was the end of it, anyway.

Vincent: Yeah, “save me” was in discussion.

Eoin: Oh, yeah! It was “save me!”

Vincent: It was “save me,” yeah.

Eoin: It was. And together, they gave an outline for a story of…Eh, where did we land on this, Vinny? It was like someone just slowly getting really depressed and fuckin’ giving up on life, was basically the gist of it.

Vincent: [Laughing] That was basically it!

Eoin: But very post-hardcore of us, I suppose, and…

Vincent: Depressing.

Eoin: Yeah, depressing and all that kind of stuff. But I think we need to discuss it a bit more thoroughly, but we have a general guideline for what we’re looking for.

I guess also just one other thing I thought of – so now that you guys are a band, you’re establishing, you’re going to be having your first single released soon, things will start moving from there – when it comes to actually what you’re listening to, in terms of trying to have influences, trying to have reference points, do you guys find yourself expanding your musical horizons just to have a wider range of knowledge, or are you just sticking to what you want to listen to without feeling the need to study or educate yourself? How do you approach music now, as a band?

Vincent: Um, I’ve always been really interested in listening to new music. I think you know this band, Nerves, in Dublin. Class band. I’ve been listening to their EP a lot, lately. I think they’re really cool. Obviously, they’re kind of in the same genre – not really, -ish – but, like, noise rock. But they’re really such a cool-sounding band. So refined and so different. They’re definitely up there. I’ve been listening to a lot of – I don’t know if you know this – but do you know what Eurobeat is?

Yeah, yeah!

Vincent: Yeah, yeah! I’ve been listening to a lot of Eurobeat and having a bit of craic, like, “This sounds kind of cool!” I’m just trying to get into more production and stuff like that. So, yeah, I’m trying to find new things, experiment a bit more, because I did get burnt out while writing music for this band for a bit, so I was like, “OK, I’m going to take a break.”  And then I was listening to a very popular song, I’m not going to say what song, which led to me writing “save me” and…[Laughs] Oh, you’ll know what this song is! You’ll know the song when we release the song, hopefully. But we can’t say it, for copyright reasons. [Laughs] 

No one’s going to accuse you of plagiarism, hopefully! [All laugh]

Vincent: No! But, basically, that song was just meant to be a solo project song. It was going to be sent off to someone, just for singing and stuff like that, and I was like, “Lads, what do you think of this? I’m just trying to come up with stuff, I’m just kind of burnt out, I’m just trying new things,” and they were like, “This could be a Raining in December song!”, I was like, “Oh! Nice!” So, I am experimenting. So, yeah. The lads can go now. I talk too much.

Eoin: Me, I just stick on Spotify Weekly. Like, I’ve got a long journey up to Dublin – like an hour and a half on the bus – so…

Where are you based?

Eoin: In Westmeath, just outside of Kinnegad. So, it’s a good trek to get up there; we’re rehearsing in Dublin City. It’s an hour and a half for me to get up, so every Monday, I’ll stick on the Spotify Discover Weekly, and that gives me, whatever, thirty new songs to listen to and pull things from. But I’d say, in general, my music has stayed probably the same. Like, I don’t actively seek out music just to sort of kind of copy/paste parts from other artists; it’s just like sort of if I like a song, I’ll add it to the playlist and then it becomes part of my taste, do you know what I mean?

Yep. And for yourself, James?

James: Em, it depends. Like, I listen to the same stuff and then just slowly add songs to the pool. Like, I’ve been listening to “Tom Sawyer” by Rush recently, because I’ve been having to learn it, and it’s not something that I ever would have purposely learnt, based on the past, but I’ve got into it now and it’s like, “Whoa! There’s a lot of stuff in this song!” It’s challenging and it makes me want to get better, you know? Like, take ideas from that and rework them and see what happens, but I’ll just find a song somewhere and, if I like it, I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll listen to this,” then just create this ever-expanding list of songs.

Trying to emulate Neil Peart. I can’t imagine what that’s like. [Laughs]

James: [Laughs] Impossible!

Yeah! Well, thanks very much, guys! I’ll just ask one final thing. Obviously, the single’s coming out next month [at the time of this interview]. Beyond that, what do you have planned for the rest of 2024?

Vincent: We’re going national, hopefully! Hopefully, we’re going national. We’re just trying to get out of Dublin, now. Trying to proper go national, now. Eoin, please get us a gig. Thank you. Love you.

Eoin: Yeah, I’m trying to get us down to Mullingar!

Vincent: Yeah, we’re trying to get out of Ireland…”Get out of Ireland”? Get out of Dublin. Maybe get out of Ireland. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. And then we might be working on another single, although there’s nothing confirmed yet.

Actually, I’ve been talking to a few bands who have been playing domestically, and it is interesting how many… – just kind of all over the place – how many interesting, weird venues there are for bands to play. It seems like if you had the notoriety, you could make a good week- or even two-week-long tour of Ireland, just playing different places each night. It would be kind of cool to see just how obscure [Laughs] you could get with the music you’re doing. Just, like, playing some old man pub, somewhere! [Laughs]

Eoin: So, Mullingar, basically!

Mullingar’s not too obscure! I’ve heard of it! Thanks very much for your time, guys. It was really nice talking with you, and is there anything you would like to add before we wrap up, or…?

Vincent: Eh…presave “restart.” [Laughs] Even though it’s just us four [on the Zoom call], but I don’t know! But thank you very much for having us. Really appreciate it

Sorry, was that directed at me, to presave it?

Vincent: Yes, yes!

OK, I’ll do it after this! [Laughs]

Vincent: Genuinely,  thank you. Genuinely, when I shot you that email, I didn’t expect anyone to reply, but you did, and I’m very grateful for that.

No, of course!

Vincent: We’re such a small band, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t hear about us until we shot you that email, and you’ve been very nice to us. So, just genuinely, thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, no worries. I try not to be mean to people! [All laugh]

Vincent: We were joking, like, “He’s just going to talk shit about how bad the song is, lads!”

Raining in December’s not-shit debut single, “restart,” is available on all streaming platforms now. The band will headline Sin É in Dublin next Friday, May 31^st, with special guests Orchid Feeder and Shallo. Tickets are available from Eventbrite. You can keep up with the band’s music, live dates, and social media accounts here.

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.