After a long break away from ‘the music’, Wicklow rockers Enemies have returned. Once given the almost cliched rock label ‘big in Japan’, the largely instrumental guitar act rose to the top of their niche with second album ‘Embark, Embrace’, and declared it all over shortly after their third record ‘Valuables’ came out in 2016.
Now, returning for a show in Dublin’s Button Factory, they’re back for a “gradual process” of a return. “I’ve remained really close friends with Lewis over the last seven years,” Mark O’Brien explains. “We’d hang out all the time, though he’s in Berlin and I’m in Limerick. We would get a bit nostalgic, and the idea of doing it again, after a couple of pints, got into my head. Watching The Beatles’ documentary ‘Get Back’ was part of it, too, wanting to be in a room together writing like that, joking and messing.”
“Then, privately, a lot of people would come up to me in bars and talk about the band and its’ impact, and there seemed to be a lot of energy around it, too. I suppose there was this growing feeling that it would be lovely to come back in a real low stakes kind of way, just to play with people again. There was no bigger plan than to get in a room and see what happens.”
“At first the energy was a bit awkward and nervous. Then we got into our rehearsal room, which looks exactly as it did seven years ago, and there was this nervous excitement, this vibrant feel about what was about to happen. And we played the first bar of a song, and it sounded so right in that moment. It sounded really good right out of the gate, and I think we took that as a sign. It’s been really enjoyable, we’ve slipped back into the old version of ourselves, without the pressure or stress.”
The first time, O’Brien explains, the band were at the heart of its members’ hopes, dreams, and in particular financial aspirations. “The stuff abroad was always the story,” O’Brien laughs. “So much of the talk was about America and Asia. It was an amazing time for Irish music, and I feel like there’s something in the atmosphere again now.”
“The first time we went to Japan in 2009, we could not believe the callibre of bands we were playing gigs with. They were incredible musicians, playing since the age of four, jazz trained, immaculate, polished guitars covered in turtle wax. And we went over with a guitar case with bottle gaps in it, no training… it took us a long time to get what they see in us.”
“We listen to a lot of very intricate math rock type music, but also Nirvana, Dillinger Escape Plan… there’s a scrappiness to it that we’ve always celebrated.”
But for how long? “We’re trying not to focus on big plans,” O’Brien says. “What ended our band over a couple of years was us putting an immense amount of pressure on it, that it had to grow, that we had to earn a living, that kind of thing. We now appreciate the friendship aspect of it, and we’re making a very conscious effort not to load too much onto it.”
“Getting in a room was the first step. The Dublin show was a second, and it feels really good, we’re having a lot of fun preparing for it. We’re sort of checking in with each other before we do the next thing. There might be tours, or at least shows outside of Ireland, but we have an agreement that anyone can just raise their hand, and that’s what we’ll do, to preserve our friendships.”
