Fontaines D.C. announce second album and share title track 'A Hero’s Death'

Words: Sam Geary 

Fontaines D.C. have broken self-isolation to announce that their second full-length, titled 'A Hero’s Death', and once again produced by Dan Carey, will be released on July 31 via Partisan Records.

Ahead of that, the band have dropped the record's title track, along with a music video starring Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones, The Wire, Peaky Blinders).

“The song is a list of rules for the self, they’re principles for self-prescribed happiness that can often hang by a thread," explains vocalist Grian Chatten. "It’s ostensibly a positive message, but with repetition comes different meanings, that’s what happens to mantras when you test them over and over. There’s this balance between sincerity and insincerity as the song goes on and you see that in the music video as well. That’s why there’s a lot of shifting from major key to minor key.

"The idea was influenced by a lot of the advertising I was seeing – the repetitive nature of these uplifting messages that take on a surreal and scary feel the more you see them.

"The title came from a line in a play by Brendan Behan, and I wrote the lyrics during a time where I felt consumed by the need to write something else to alleviate the fear that I would never be able follow up 'Dogrel'. But more broadly it’s about the battle between happiness and depression, and the trust issues that can form tied to both of those feelings.”

'A Hero’s Death' tracklist:

1. I Don’t Belong
2. Love Is The Main Thing
3. Televised Mind
4. A Lucid Dream
5. You Said
6. Oh Such A Spring
7. A Hero’s Death
8. Living In America
9. I Was Not Born
10. Sunny
11. No