Irish rap trio Kneecap have spent the last year in relative infamy. They now arrive at their awaited second studio album FENIAN with a reputation that precedes their music. This sense of noteriety has created a strange pressure on the record to justify headlines that have already cast them as agitators and impassioned spokespeople for a political moment they inhabited with unabashed ease. True to their name, they treat that scrutiny as material, folding the threat of repercussions back into the record and weaponising it into something deliberately subversive.

The trio hail from West Belfast in Northern Ireland, which is the part of the island still governed by the United Kingdom after a century of political fracture. Having already turned their origin story into a self-titled semi-biopic that became Ireland’s official submission for the 2024 Academy Awards, Kneecap built their early following by rapping in both English and Irish (Gaeilge), which already positioned them as cultural irritants for anyone who flinches at chants like “Brits out” or “Tiocfaidh ár lá” (“our day will come” - the Irish republican cry for freedom). Every political reference that punctuates their galvanising verses have been shaped by a history of colonial violence and a long campaign for Irish reunification.

Over the past eighteen months, the Belfast trio — Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí — have moved from cult figures orbiting Irish-language revivalism into a global flashpoint after their Coachella set and the subsequent UK “terrorism” case against Mo Chara collapsed in court. This prolonged period of escalation has shaped this new album at a structural level, with their blistering polemic absorbing all that scrutiny and metabolising it into something far less worried about being palatable, while consistently returning to the same anti-imperialist questions in sharper, riskier forms.

The opener, “Éire go Deo,” which translates to “Ireland forever,” sets the tone with a chant that feels overheard at a march. Kneecap’s entire project is built on the idea that language holds the key to freeing oneself from the shackles of imperialism —  “every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom“ —  so when they repeat that opening phrase over a slow, pulsing beat, they are grounding their sophomore work in a cultural fight that predates them by generations. 

That context feeds directly into the slick new single, “Smugglers & Scholars,” folds his recent run-in with British authority into a longer history of Irish resistance through the line “I’ll never learn my lesson / always be the government’s obsession,” that alludes to a recurring pattern of being marked, watched, and mislabeled; which tells you everything about the political temperatures of the ethos they are operating within. The production here leans into industrial hip-hop textures that echo police sirens and surveillance noise, which gives the track a physical sense of pressure.

Kneecap push that pressure into outright confrontation on “Liars Tale,” where they name-check U.K. Prime Minister with “F**k Keir Starmer / Netanyahu’s b***h and genocide armer”. The bluntness here feels most in line with Kneecap’s no-holds-barrred lyricism and connects British foreign policy to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which Kneecap have been vocally opposing. The parallels are sure to make some genocide apologists squirm, though the band’s entire point is to relish in the discomfort of the colonisers. 

“Carnival” stops pretending any of this is metaphor and just drags us straight into the courtroom, opening on a clipped, bureaucratic voice: “Mo Chara, you stand before us in the Westminster Magistrate’s Court, charged under the Terrorism Act of 2000. How do you plead?”, to which Mo Chara answers calmy with “Neamhchiontach” (“not guilty”). Then the chorus kicks in and the walls fall away; suddenly the track is running two feeds at once — inside voice, outside noise — as recordings of real crowds chanting “Free Mo Chara, free free Mo Chara” build up the chorus. Móglaí Bap then raps that “the Brits are at it, repeating history,” placing this modern legal clash within a much older pattern of control that listeners in Belfast would recognise immediately.

The title track “FENIAN” takes a word that has done a long, messy tour through Irish history and flips it back into circulation. The term itself comes from the “Fianna”, a band of semi-mythical warrior-hunters in early Irish folklore, and it was later adopted in the 19th century by the Fenian Brotherhood, a revolutionary organisation pushing for Irish independence from British rule. Over time, particularly in Northern Ireland and parts of Britain, “Fenian” slid into use as a slur directed at Irish Catholics, which is the version that still lingers in everyday speech. Kneecap pick up that entire history and run it through a rave filter, turning the title track into a chant-heavy, EDM-tinged flex.

But the album’s most direct political bridge is on “Palestine,” which features Fawzi, a rapper from the occupied West Bank. The collaboration marks years of extended solidarity between Irish and Palestinian struggles. When they say “Ní stopfaimid go mbeidh gach duine saor (we will not stop until everyone is free), they are extending their frame of reference beyond Ireland, and by giving Fawzi the mic in Arabic, they sidestep the usual slogan-heavy solidarity playbook and let it exist as a conversation between people living through different versions of the same settler colonialism.

A sense of growth also carries into the album’s more personal corners. “Irish Goodbye,” which closes the record, deals with the death of Móglaí Bap’s mother, and the line “how come it’s always the best of us that can’t bear to be” shifts the focus from public anger to private grief, which hits harder because it comes after half an hour of political rage. The placement also reframes everything that came before it as a routine part of Irish life that includes loss as well as protest, and the collaboration with British poet and musician Kae Tempest adds layers of weight to its messaging.

Formally, FENIAN expands without losing its footing. Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap trade couplets with explosive intent, snapping between Irish and English and stacking internal rhymes and snarky punchlines that undercut the grim caricature built around them over the past year with a sense of irreverence and whimsy. Producer Dan Carey, who has worked with the likes of Fontaines D.C. and Wet Leg, brings a tighter, more deliberate sound that shifts between hip-hop, techno, and trip-hop — “Big Bad Mo” rides a bassline that feels custom-built for a warehouse rave while “Headcase” pulls from UK garage to explore addiction and the paranoia that comes with sudden fame. 

What FENIAN ultimately does is turn a year of public scrutiny into a record that sounds fully aware of who is listening and why. Instead of retreating into safer, respectability politics, Kneecap take the exact things that got them in trouble and pushes those unmentionables further into the centre of the record. Now more than ever before, they know their lyrics can and will be weaponised.

Tá a n-am tagtha.

FENIAN is available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music and other music streaming platforms