For the past decade, the idea of a rock band once again capturing or defining the zeitgeist has been considered fanciful at best, or otherwise deluded. Genres rise and fall with popularity, but rock? The chances were slim, with culture geared towards solo pop acts, rapid rises for rappers and dance crossovers.
Now, we have Fontaines D.C. to fly the flag. Since 2019, the Irish five-piece has worked diligently to become a contender: debut album Dogrel was a ramshackle arrival and 2020’s A Hero’s Death cut through despite the industry stasis of the pandemic. Skinty Fia (2022) proved that the band could further evolve and grow as songwriters, before 2024’s Romance brought Fontaines acclaim outside Europe and onto their big battleground: America.
Romance featured a number of gigantic tunes – “Starburster” (195 million streams on Spotify); “Favourite” (131 million) – and landed the band its first Grammy nomination in the best rock album category. Fontaines’ lime-green aesthetic – slimier, sicklier than Charli’s shade of Brat – and fearless innovation marked the true arrival of a band who could attract cross generation fanbases and impress critically and commercially.
Its follow-up, the recently-released Dopamine Chamber, is the group at the peak of its powers, embracing synth-pop, industrial sounds and classic songwriting for a critical and commercial smash. The album hit No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart and scored the year’s third-biggest opening week, behind only Harry Styles and Olivia Rodrigo. On the Billboard 200, they landed at No. 14, their highest-ever peak.
Across Europe, the picture was similarly rosy, with No. 1s in the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland and Belgium and top five finishes in Denmark, France, Poland, Sweden. Little surprise, then, that the band wanted to kick off the extensive live slate on the continent with a run of arena headline shows, which will hit the U.K. and Ireland in the coming weeks. Even bigger dates are set for 2027 including the London Stadium and a historic appearance at Slane Castle in Ireland.
As Fontaines’ triumphant run begins in earnest, these were the seven best moments from the show at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome on Tuesday (Nov. 10).
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A rousing start
The group has previously curated top notch support acts for its tours — Hayley Williams, Madra Salach, Blondshell among them — and industrial punk-rock duo Chalk is another perfect match. Appearing on the whole European run, including Fontaines’ U.K. dates in the coming weeks, the Belfast-born pair are punishing to the extreme: “Get F–ked,” “Pain” and “Can’t Feel It” are well-suited for venues of this stature. Chalk’s harsh yet melodic sound shows that the influence and intensity of Nine Inch Nails still casts a long shadow in contemporary music.
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Sheer ambition
“Six Shot Morning” sounds beefy on record, but live, the intensity and broodiness is cranked to the nines. Consider it a quasi-sequel to “Romance,” the self-titled curtain-raiser on Fontaines’ previous record, which also came into its own in a live setting. As the new opening song on the Dopamine Chamber set, “Six Shot” in its euphoric live arrangement resembles something celebratory, despite the oblique lyrics.
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Momentary blissness
A long road is ahead for the lads as their tour stretches well into 2027 and touches nearly every corner of the earth. There’s no signs of self-preservation, but just a meticulously well-oiled machine that is capable of knocking out 22 songs with little in the way of crowd work or breathers. The show is utterly engrossing, even though their stage production is relatively minimal for venues of this size: a shimmering drape and vibrant lighting are just as impactful as any wraparound LED screen. “Roman Holiday” is so lyrically dense and mesmerizing, it has the rich depth and intrigue of an engrossing short story that stops the world around you, if only for a few minutes.
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The band’s ringleader
Frontman Grian Chatten carries a heavy load for the lads, acting as the band’s beating, bleeding heart. Throughout the show he marches and skips down his mini runway – the only member to utilise it – geeing up the crowd, or bending over to sing directly to the front row, and always finding the right moment to do so. During “In the Modern World,” he picks out a young fan on the front row and delivers the middle eight to her and her only. When he’s done, he floats away like it was nothing; she sinks to her knees in disbelief, leaning on her friends to hold her up. He just has that effect on people.
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“Tongue” tastes even better live
Dopamine Chamber’s centerpiece “Tongue” is, to many, the band’s most challenging song to date, particularly given that a memorable guitar moment arrives in the song’s final moments. Instead, it eschew the six-string for a twinkling piano riff and a bouncy bass groove, in what feels like a nod to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. In the live setting, Tom Coll’s percussion provides a punchier beat and elevates the intensity of the song’s chorus.
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The Dam bursts
Since its release in 2024, “Starburster” has felt become the band’s signature tune. At the time it was a departure from their scruffy post-punk sound, embracing elements of hip-hop and a Beatles-esque middle eight; in lesser hands, it would have been a right old mess. Over time, the stature has only grown, and when it arrived as the main set’s final song, the standing area turned into one giant mosh pit as Chatten geed them up for chaos.
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A lyrical master
Alongside “Starburster,” Skinty Fia track “I Love You” is the other contender in that battle for the band’s signature song. They vary in tone, however, but show the two sides of a very similar coin: “Starburster” is showy and silly; “I Love You” totally earnest and arresting. It features some of Chatten’s finest lyrics, particularly as he reflects on the failure of young people to be able to build a life in their home city of Dublin amidst economic uncertainty. He delivers two immaculate post-chorus verses full of greatness: “I love you like a penny loves the pocket of a priest,” he tells the crowd. Chatten is full of lines that rattle around your head for days, weeks, months and years. This song has about five of them.
