Cardinals say their next album is heading somewhere darker

Cardinals used their Reading Festival debut on August 28 to talk to NME about the album they are writing, and the word they kept coming back to was darker.

They were also clear about what it is not. It will not be a black metal record or an electronic record, the Cork band said, but there are influences pulling it in directions their debut Masquerade did not go.

The bigger stages are still an adjustment. Accordionist Finn Manning said the band love playing club gigs to a couple of hundred people, where there is an intimacy for the audience and more connection for the musician. His brother, frontman Euan Manning, said the music that shaped them came from records and small rooms rather than festivals and stadiums. "At a club show, it's easier to tell if someone's tearing up to a song," he said.

Writing happens at home rather than in transit. Finn dismissed the romantic idea of a band writing in the back of a van with an acoustic guitar as something that never worked for them, saying they prefer somewhere quiet, safe and familiar. Recently that has meant Cork city and the coastal town of Kinsale.

The Reading and Leeds debut had its own weight for a band raised on the Nirvana Live At Reading album and film. They had just come from Japan, where they played some very big stages, and their ascent has run from a tiny Oslo basement to a Finsbury Park support slot in front of 40,000 people with Fontaines D.C.

Masquerade has been out for six months, a record Euan said pinpoints that era of their lives as people and as a band, and they are now looking forward. The follow-up is logged on the release calendar with the rest of the rock and indie pipeline, alongside the fifth Fontaines D.C. album, and their weekend shared a bill with a Royal Blood secret set.