Having recently announced details of their new album, FENIAN, on 24th April, Belfast trio KNEECAP have today shared ‘Smugglers & Scholars’, the latest track to be taken from the record following ‘Liars Tale’.
• LISTEN TO SMUGGLERS & SCHOLARS •
Premiered this evening on Zane Lowe’s Apple 1 Music Show, ‘Smugglers & Scholars’, smashes open the doors of the album. Coming in on a low end three note bass riff that sounds like it’s lifted from the kind of Detroit hip hop record the band would have grown up listening to. It finds the band creating their own unique electricity over a steel heavy pulse.
This is a sonic balaclava, loaded with menace and fearlessness. Introducing a sonic universe that tells us we’ve firmly entered the underbelly of the riotous confrontation, sneaking down the alleyways with artists at their peak. Welcome to Kneecap’s world. It’s not the Ireland you think you know: “Ya think it’s all poetry and clovers, when it’s raincoats and police Land Rovers. Salt of the earth, looking over their shoulder. Someone shot in turn, chopper hovering over.
Talking about the track, Kneecap said:
“A track that’s reminiscing on Revolutionary times in Ireland, driven by a hopefulness, when the working class, academics and good people everywhere united and took action in search of a better future.
KNEECAP return to bend genre, language, and rules. The most talked about artists in the world are turning the page. A new chapter, new sounds, new manifestos.
• WATCH THE VIDEO FOR SMUGGLERS & SCHOLARS •
• ‘FENIAN’ TRACK-LIST• PRE-ORDER ‘FENIAN’ LP OR CD • RELEASED ON APRIL 26TH, 2026 •
• READ MORE ABOUT ‘FENIAN’ HERE •
A blistering album that revels in darkness while bursting through the void with illuminated revery. This is FENIAN.
Produced by Dan Carey (Fontaines D.C., Kae Tempest, Wet Leg), FENIAN upends expectations with an expansive sonic palate, traversing acid house, trip-hop, dubstep, and more – Masters of rave and rap theatre, FENIAN represents Kneecap’s most sophisticated exploration of language and sounds.
More darkness. More confrontation. More craic. More energy. More solidarity. More absolute bangers. And more fuel for the unrelenting engine that powers this unstoppable force. For their remarkable second album, Kneecap have come out fighting.
Throughout, the sirens and alarms ring, and the chorus’s blast. Revolutionary and rebellious, confrontational and impossibly catchy, inescapably intelligent and brilliantly rendered, FENIAN doesn’t just represent the next phase in Kneecap’s trajectory but stands as a remarkable record that thrills as much as it surprises. The mayhem of their breakout year is a memory now. But Kneecap are neither dwelling on that nor merely persevering through it. In FENIAN they excel, reaching a new peak that is undeniable in its mastery.
Pressure makes diamonds, and FENIAN glistens with Kneecap’s uncut gems.
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• ‘FENIAN’ FORMATS •
• KNEECAP STORE • BANDCAMP • ROUGH TRADE SHOPS •
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