Idiosyncratic Irish five-piece Bricknasty can’t help but transgress musical expectation. Searching souls who found a home in each other and in their artistic purpose, there’s a lot more than meets the eye with these likely lads; as Wonderland’s Ben Tibbits discovers on a blustery November Monday in Elephant and Castle, talking bodies of work, addiction and brotherhood.

A harsh November wind bites the choked London air as Bricknasty’s white van arrives outside of The Prince of Wales pub, down the road from one of Elephant and Castle’s dreaded roundabouts. The five Irish musicians file out of the transit, jaded but merry having taken their sonic manifesto to the south coast the night before for a sold out show in Brighton—one of ten performances they’ll be undertaking on this current run. The London show, at the infamously cosy Corsica Studios located a stone’s throw from where we meet now, takes place tomorrow. Before sitting down for a chat, we’ll be taking some pictures, but a round of coffees seems overdue firsthand. We survey the area, eventually ending up at Black Cowboy’s coffee joint, an eccentric nook within central London’s posterior, with the lads greeted like local heroes and posing for photos with the gregarious owner, and taking it in turns to hold their new Spongebob mascot, which the support act from the Brighton show gifted them.

A few more shoot locations and a passed-around joint later, and we are nestled in the corner of the aforementioned boozer, which carries a charmingly dilapidated aesthetic. It’s my inaugural attempt at mentally unravelling as many as five subjects, and the playful boisterousness of the nasties makes for choppy waters to float upon at first. I can’t imagine the notion of a journalist is one they greet too warmly, what with the eroding reputation of the music press, and for the first five or so minutes of our interview it feels like the band are trying to suss me out. There’s extensive talk of the sophomore live action Transformers film, Revenge of the Fallen, which they compare to their own live show set up, testing not only my autobot knowledge but also my nimbleness in conversation. “We just come together,” says thick-accented guitarist and singer Fatboy, the unpredictable, deeply captivating and erratically profound root of the band. “All the warring tribes putting their differences aside to make one megazorb.” 

Bricknasty’s idiosyncratic amalgamation of instruments is far from your average five-piece band’s modus vivendi. Fatboy’s folk-tinged jazz guitar riffage and raspy, delicate vocals lay centric, whilst the introvert and handsome Dara Abdurahman’s rich bass-playing adds depth and colour. Korey Thomas, with his long scraggly hair and middle-aged bloke mannerisms, keeps the rhythm tight and expressive, and Louis Younge brings a vivacious uniqueness on the saxophone and keyboard respectively. Cillian McCauley, an incisive and intelligent producer, “adopts the thunderbolt position,” Fatboy explains, one of many outlandish referencial comparisons that make all-too-much sense when developed beyond an initial concept. “He’ll stay completely silent in a black robe for the duration of the ritual.” 

The band often talk over each other—sometimes in brazen agreement, other times in cordial argument—and Fatboy and Cillian are the worst offenders; sometimes bickering, other times seamlessly in sync. It was through their serendipitous meeting that the first seeds of Bricknasty’s blossoming were sewn. “He started sending me images on Facebook that if my mother had seen at the time would have been like, ‘You are never going outside’,” Cillian says, recalling their first contact via the internet after stumbling upon each other’s Soundcloud. “I used to think that he was a 40 year old fella trying to groom me,” Fatboy grins behind his balaclava in reply. “Because of the language that he used. He’d be talking about my demos, like [imitates posh British voice], ‘This composition is stupendous’. Weird fella. He’s my mate and all, I’ll say it to his face, but yeah. Eventually I went out to him, and he pulled up in a big huge bleeding black van with spray paint on the side of it, called it the Black Panther. But it actually ended up grand.” 

Even in those very early sessions, there was electricity between the two budding creatives. Both Fatboy and Cillian, who “wanted to be like Martin Garrix when I was 13 but I moved on quick enough from that,” had developed an incessant interest in making music, but had never gotten beyond making core sonic ideas; loops, broken verses, snapshots of melody, etc. But then they found each other, and the puzzle pieces began fitting into shape. “The first time I met Cillian, when I thought he was trying to groom me, we stayed up for like 30 hours without sleeping just to finish one song,” the masked frontman says. “Because I was making little things, he was making little things but we’d never fully committed. So we just stayed up and worked on the first song. He went to sleep and I listened to it like 800 times. I’m not even exaggerating, it’d finish and I’d put it straight back on.”

Some time after, Fatboy and Cillian both opted to venture further into education and study at BIMM Dublin. It’s there that Bricknasty formed, with the band members moving from their respective sleepy towns around Ireland to join the already Dublin born-and-bred Fatboy. Although the frontman dropped out of college quickly and began working full time at Tesco, the five boys stayed in touch and became ardent friends and creative partners. Now, they all live in Dublin within 10 minutes of each other. “The jelly on the inside is all the same with us,” Korey says of their fellowship, which carries great importance to all of the members, and is built on the unity and understanding between them as souls and as musicians. “We’re different variations of the same idea,” Fatboy agrees. “If the lads grew up where I grew up, they’d be like how I am and I’d be like how they are. Had I met these boys when I was four, they’d be my best mates. Everyone here was a black sheep when they were kids, and that feeling carries through. And to compensate for being the black sheep it’s like, ‘Well what if I just get better at music than youse lot’.”

While the other members felt a lack of purpose and perhaps some degree of isolation before finding solace in each other (“I think that if we were ever [lost], we didn’t think it,” Cillian says. “We were convincing ourselves of not”), Fatboy’s childhood troubles stretched beyond disillusionment. He grew up in Ballymun, a notorious and deprived suburb in northern Dublin, the “most extreme” of the nasties’ early environments. He lived in a big block of flats, until the council knocked them down, a subject that still stings him when discussed. “We used to get free heating and water, and obviously they couldn’t allow the commoners,” he theatrically pretends to spit, “to get free heating and water so they knocked them down and moved them into a load of new builds.” Aside from turbulent housing situations, murky adversities drove a young Fatboy into the arms of addiction, the only way of relieving himself from the pain and difficulty of his childhood. “I remember my first time taking bombs when I was like 14,” he says candidly. “That was the first time I ever relaxed. You know when you turn the fan off in the kitchen after cooking for an hour? That’s what it was like. Then it went from bad to worse. Then from worse to just dirt.” 

Fotboy’s quagmire with substances continued into the beginning of the band’s tenure, but he’s been clean for a while now, staring his problems straight in the eye without the pretense of fear. His strength and perpetuity is commendable, but he couldn’t have done it without the lads that sit next to him, or what they represent in his life. “I just never got the chance to make it right with myself, and it steered my life in such a dark way and turned me into such a nasty person,” he says. “Even the lads will tell you, when they first met me I was a fucking horrible bastard. But for whatever reason they must have thought I was capable of more, so they were patient. But if they weren’t, that’s it really, game over, no music career. Them boys, they took their time with me, and I knocked the drinks and the drugs on the head. The lads were the biggest part, with the art as well. Having a chance to get it off my chest. Yeah I made some mistakes, yeah I did some things I wasn’t meant to do, yeah I was a different person. But it’s in the past now. I told that story, so I don’t have to keep reliving it.”

Bricknasty’s debut EP from June 2023, “INA CRUELER”, documents Fatboy’s personal struggles, as well as depicting the raw beauty and uncertainty of inner city Dublin life. All-in-all, it’s a highly accomplished first venture into making a body of work, with some great features from fellow Irish artists Tomike and KhakiKid. Musically sprawling across a coterie of styles from folk to jazz, soul to glitchy electronica, the whirlwind of emotional current heightens in direction and pace throughout the EP’s effortless 22 minute runtime, building an estuary that leads into the open ocean of the climatic title-track, a dazzling cascade of pitched vocals, lusciously spiky guitar patterns and a sense of gorgeous longing. 

The project is a eulogy and a celebration of the place that Fatboy became Fatboy, a thicker-than-physical reminder of where he’s from, and what Dublin means to him. Whether that be through the cover art of the Ballymun block that he grew up in—which was shot by late great Irish photographer Ross McDonald in a further augmentation of the art’s poignancy—or via the tales that the lyricist spins through his singing and rapping, and through the EP’s thoughtful positioning of voice note recordings. “It was very important that I spoke about stuff that was never spoken about,” he says. “The violence in the house when I was younger, the addiction, all of that stuff. And all them stories happened where that cover is. You have certain acts like Fontaines or whatever who talk about Dublin vaguely, but how about Dublin properly? That’s what I wanted. If you’re actually there, that’s what it’ll look like. It’s more solid than stone even.”

“Cos the art is there,” Cillian interjects. “Just being able to make the music, have the crack. Even if we did squabble, it was still always good crack in the studio. Most of the time.” The band sniggers at such, and it becomes known that the process—intense, quick, intimate—of making their debut EP was the biggest challenge on Bricknasty’s collectivity to date. So much so that the outspoken pair, Cillian and Fatboy, weren’t talking or working together when the band came to start writing their October 2024-released follow-up mixtape “XONGZ አስቀያሚ ጡብ”. ”These three lads,” Fatboy starts, pointing to Dara, Korey and Louis, “Were kind of our user interface because me and Cillian were a bit frosty after “INA CRUELER”. We were just too close to it. So the boys came in.” 

I query how the two made up. “It was just accepting each other, wasn’t it?” Fatboy says to Cillian, who nods. “Cos there’s things about you lad, that took me a while just to accept. And same with me, there were things that took you a while to accept. And now we get on like a bleeding house on fire. Like brothers. It’s like a brotherly thing with all the lads.” “Especially with someone who you don’t expect to be your brother,” Cillian adds. “That maybe you know someone for so long, there’s a point that passes, a gradual one, that all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Fuck, this cunt is winding me up in a way that only my little brothers can’. And you never expect to see that anywhere else.”

Despite their teething problems at creative harmony, with “INA CRUELER” Bricknasty made a deeply expressive and technically superb body of art. And all without outside influence; the five lads finished the work themselves, because “you should be world class before you have anything out, you shouldn’t need the label advance.” And then they waited, meandering their next step, eventually signing to independent record label FAMM, home to Jorja Smith, ENNY and Maverick Sabre. The latter is also Fatboy’s answer, without a second thought, when asked who pushed them to send the EP to the label in the first place. 

“He used to come to Ballymun to the flats to give the lads game. I was too young but the older lads used to go out and I used to look up to them. So then when I got older, I was with Korey, and Korey said that Mav was playing in Dublin. We only had like a thousand followers [at this point]. I sent him a voice message asking for us to open [the show]. I said, ‘Here listen lad, I’m a fella from Ballymun when you used to come out. You wouldn’t have seen me, I was too small. But give us a chance or whatever’. And he said, ‘Yeah no bother’, and we did it and the live band was sounding great. So we met [Sabre], and [Bricknasty] were already working on songs, getting big things together, writing great stuff. “INA CRUELER” was getting done. So then Mav started hearing little clips of “INA CRUELER” through our Instagram, and he was like, ‘I reckon I can get you signed, this shit’s insane.’ And then that was it. Maverick Sabre, forever, I owe him my bollocks.” Without him, what would they have done? “Heroin. Black tar, syringe, arm,” Fatboy winces. “I still think we’d have navigated it,” Louis disagrees. “It’d be different, but we’d still be trying.”

The release of “INA CRUELER” via FAMM was a broad success. But, “banged up” after the internal strife and in need of “a way to mend the ruins,” the nasties opted to strip back their process for a second project. “XONGZ” was made over a longer period of time and with an emphasis on live playing and naturalism as a form of writing, as shown by “Reprise” and “alone for this” being completely improvised, on-the-spot recordings. Bricknasty’s sophomore project is looser, casual, instinctive, and in many ways more exciting than its predecessor. The thrilling compositional turbulence is decorated by the band’s exquisite musicianship—highlighted on the likes of dainty opener “boyfriend”—and augmented by strong feature contributions from Aby Coulibaly and Oscar Jerome. And it’s a mixtape—not an EP, as several of the members affirm. “An EP has something clearly that it’s trying to do outside of being a musical escapade,” Fatboy explains. ““XONGZ” is just songs. There’s real life on there but again, we’re only communicating it because it happened. It’s not some mad genius play that we have in order to impress upon the fragility of human life. The songs are about what happened. They give someone a look at something real, and you don’t always get that in music.”

As our lengthy Monday afternoon in one of Elephant and Castle’s many charming taproom’s draws to a close, I feel like I’ve won Bricknasty over. They now treat me as one of their own rather than treading on the tips of my toes, and any doubts I had about their ability to become a global phenomenon have long evaporated. With two projects that flaunt their many-sided sonic disposition, a bond unbreakable by personal or professional differences, and a searing ambition for what the future can hold, these five unlikely lads have built a plate on which they can feast for years to come, fed by an unnerving hunger to disrupt. “I wanna not be a wage slave,” the band’s ever-endearing spokesman Fatboy affirms. “I wanna have autonomy, I wanna be able to raise a family, and raise them the way that I think is the best way to raise them, not the way the government thinks I should. I want a nice lovely wife and kids, and that’s it. Musically, enough crap, enough of the messing around. There’s an organic thing in London where the Fruity Loops approach is gonna work, making beats and rapping. But if you’re not part of that, accept it and move on. Practise piano, guitar, singing, composing. Practice harp, get the miscellaneous instruments in there. Who’s playing harpsichord? Who’s playing fuckin’ tuba. Pick up an instrument for fuck’s sake and stop pretending to be Biggie Smalls or whatever.” 

Fatboy’s personal metamorphosis from a “big fat drug addict” to one of the most charismatic frontmen active today is no mean feat. He will undoubtedly struggle in his life, trying to stay in the sunlight to avoid the past’s lurking shadow. But he has his music, he has his ma, he has Dublin, and—more importantly than anything at this moment—he has his Bricknasty brothers. Nowadays, you won’t find him moaning about anything. “No drink, no drugs. Starve the flesh, feed the spirit, bro,” he answers when I ask him how he stays out of trouble before we part ways. “If you can have faith in your life, do. Look after your family. Be a good brother, son, boyfriend, friend. And if you fail at one thing, win it back. If it gets took off you, get it back. Don’t just sit there whinging. You’re gonna make mistakes and let people down, but you just gotta go again.” 

Listen to Bricknasty.