Ankea Festival

This Will Destroy You, which is often shortened to TWDY was formed by guitarists, Jeremy Galindo and Chris King, bass guitarist Raymond Brown and drummer Andrew Miller. They all met through mutual friends and played together in various bands throughout high school. Their name spawned from a song that was going to be called “This Will Destroy You” but was rejected for being too pretentious. The band found it “hilarious”.

When asked whether he wished the band had chosen a different name, King proclaimed to Rock Sound “It’s supposed to be a little bit obnoxious. There’s something about people automatically hating you before you play that’s kind of endearing. It gets to the point where it’s over-the-top obnoxious. It’s an attention-grabber and people will check it out I guess. Even if they hate it.”

Their self-recorded and self-produced first EP, “Young Mountain” was released in 2005. It received a great deal of critical acclaim including being named the fifth best instrumental released of the year by The Silent Ballet”. The band was contacted by Magic Bullet Record owner Brent Eyestone over the Internet and he asked them to contribute a track to his label’s “It Came From The Hills Vol. 1”. In June 2006 Magic Bullet re-packaged and re-released “Young Mountain”. The band’s reputation grew and caught the attention of Pitchfork Media and Rolling Stone. A Sputnikmusic review said “TWDY’s sound is near perfect. Production wise, everything is right where it should be. Tone wise, it doesn’t get much better. The quiet parts are tear jerking. The loud parts, while equally tear jerking, are brutal.”

The follow up self-titled album, was one of those that simply took a long time to create. There were many obstacles that the band had to overcome, in a creative context, and also the writing was slow. It was a two-year process, and the album eventually was released by Magic Bullet in January 2008. It was positively received by the music press. Drowned in Sound called it “a true classic of it’s kind”

The “Field Studies” EP was a collaboration on a split record; the members of both bands were good friends and had further plans to tour again together in the future. They came together at John Congleton’s Texas studio in July 2008 to record their contributions.

“Another Language” was released on September 16th 2014. The single from the album “Dustism” was released on their earlier in the year on June 25th, 2014.

Let’s face it, God Is An Astronaut is the kind of name that a band has to earn, rather than just have. You’d feel short changed if you went to see them and they sounded like The Killers, is what I’m trying to say. Fortunately, they sound like no-one else on their level, possibly like no-one else in the world. The inspired idea of tying down space rock and post rock’s more meandering tendencies in favour of strict, rigorous, motoric rhythms is paying them back dividends and, like some of the greatest music ever written, it all comes back to a pair of brothers.

Fortunately enough, these ones don’t seem to hate each other. God Is An Astronaut was formed by twin brothers Niels and Torsten Kinsella, who play the guitar/keyboards, and bass/guitars respectively. Both of them spent the 90’s playing in an assortment of rock bands before heading into remixing by the turn of the century. The Kinsella brothers were contracted to write the music for an album that an assortment of different singers would actually sing on, however, by 2002 the idea fell through.

At first, the duo were thoroughly annoyed, however, then they realized that they had an album’s worth of instrumental music that was essentially theirs. They set about rejigging the music and by 2002, they had written, recorded and released “The End Of The Beginning”, the first God Is An Astronaut record proper. A year later they recruited Noel Healy to drum for their very first live shows and their first videos for “From Dust To The Beyond” and their first record’s title track started to get played on MTV UK.

Since then, the band have gone from strength to strength. They are sensations in their native Ireland, playing packed out festival sets for nearly over a decade now. They’ve released a further six albums and have developed not only an outstanding band to perform live with, but a truly psychedelic visual show taking in lights and video matched to each specific song they play created by the band members. They’re a truly unique band that we could stand to see a lot more of. Highly recommended.