KNEECAP are the best thing to happen to mainstream music in this country since Thatcher, and they don’t even want to be part of it. The iconoclastic Belfast trio blend heavy rave beats with punk-rap verses in a mix of English and Gaeilge teeming with republican rhetoric, violent outbursts, and eccentric tales of their apparently constant intoxication. Although they’ve been around for almost a decade, they solidified their place in the public consciousness last year with the release of their fictionalised biopic, which won a BAFTA and seven BFI awards.

 

They’re no strangers to the front page either. Last year they were embroiled in a court case against the UK government—which they won—over withholding funding they’d been awarded. Kemi Badenoch, who was business secretary this time just last year (if you can believe it), blocked the funding because she took issue with the band’s appropriation of IRA slogans and imagery, as well their persistent vocal opposition to the British state. They’ve been dragged offstage, banned from national radio, and condemned by multiple governments, all while having a better time than anyone else in the room.

 

But this time they’ve really put their foot in it. Or more accurately, their foot has been carefully and deliberately placed in it by a media apparatus foaming at the mouth and eager for blood, and they’ve found themselves writing slightly more public statements than usual this past month. This time even those who had defended their past antics have put down a firm hand and said they’ve ‘gone too far.’ They may even be liable for prosecution.

 

The current controversy began at their Coachella performances last month. When they stopped to make a political statement about the ongoing genocide in Gaza during their first performance, the live stream of the performance suspiciously cut out. The band condemned this as censorship, ensuring that the stream would stay online for their second performance. The next weekend the stream stayed online, and the message that had been hidden was broadcast to
millions around the world: ‘FUCK ISRAEL. FREE PALESTINE.’

 

This ignited a righteous shitestorm in both the British and international press. For about a week, the world’s media were jumping over themselves to condemn the apparently brazen display of antisemitism on one of America’s biggest stages. KNEECAP defended their statement as free speech arguing that, even if it lacked nuance or complexity, it was a valid critique of the Israeli state’s ongoing genocidal campaign. This incident really wasn’t surprising for anyone familiar with KNEECAP though, as they’ve made ardent support for the Palestinian people a crucial feature of their personal and artistic identities. It was what came after that really kicked things off.

 

Just as it looked like the Coachella episode was about to simply become another subheading under the growing ‘controversies’ section of the band’s Wikipedia, a clip of a KNEECAP gig in 2023 was thrown into the mix. In the clip, they can be heard telling the crowd ‘The only good Tory is a dead Tory…kill your local MP.’ Oh dear.

 

The video landed like a lit cigarette on an oil rig. They were condemned by figures across the political spectrum for their ‘dangerous’ and ‘hateful’ language, including by the families of murdered MP’s Joe Cox and David Amess, who felt the apology the band directed towards them was not thoroughly genuine. There have also been calls, not least from Keir Starmer himself, for them to be stripped from this year’s Glastonbury line-up, among other dates they have booked across the UK this summer.

 

To top it off, the counter-terrorism unit at Scotland Yard have initiated an investigation into those comments, the Coachella performance, and other clips where they’re alleged to support Hamas and Hezbollah, designated by the government as terrorist groups. They have recently posted a statement denying these claims. Even though the band are used to thriving off bad press, this seems like a new height from which they might struggle to descend.

 

Promoting murder on stage is not usually a good look. KNEECAP have claimed that the current fiasco is a bare-faced political takedown that’s trying to draw attention away from the real issue: Israel’s repression and mass murder of the Palestinian people. The timing of the clip’s surfacing is definitely suspect, and it seems the media have deliberately overlooked the positive impact of their activism (vocalist Móglaí Bap raised over £30,000 for families in Gaza by running a 10K every day of their last tour).

 

But circling around within the discourse on their ‘politically violent’ remarks were the echoes of events from last summer. When reading The Guardian’s haughty liberal denouncement, I found myself wondering how similar this was to the social media posts inciting racial violence following the Stockport riots, and what that meant for my usual support of KNEECAP.

 

 

Though I’m not a lawyer, or a law student for that matter, the distinction between the specific and overt calls to arms in last year’s cases—where names and locations were shared as targets—and KNEECAP’s vague political gesturing may save them from prison time. I’m not sure it even qualifies as hate speech. But on the surface, the fundamental ethical difference between the two cases, if one is to be drawn, seems only down to the interpreter’s political persuasion. After all, the racist rhetoric of the Stockport rioters was inherently political as well; it’s as tied to the rising momentum of legitimate political fascism in Europe as the IRA were to Sinn Féin.

 

But to defend KNEECAP, or at the very least to argue that this incident should not diminish support for them, we have to concede that there isn’t much of a difference. KNEECAP are a violent band. Their very name is a reference to the IRA’s favourite method of corporal punishment. They’re not shy about that violence either, it’s all over their most recent album Fine Art. In the title track, they sample a clip of a news presenter grumbling over a mural of a burning armoured police truck they displayed on a West Belfast wall. Their response? ‘It’s just a piece of fine art.’

 

Their standout single ‘H.O.O.D.’ carries on in the same manner. At the very beginning of the track, they admit that they’re the most violent people in Ireland behind Arlene Foster, former head of the DUP. But, unlike Foster, their violence isn’t whitewashed or hidden behind ideological posturing. They’re not politicians or role models, as the chorus demonstrates: ‘I’m a H, double-O D, low-life scum that’s what they say about me.’ The member responsible for making the beats wears a tricolour balaclava and calls himself DJ Próvai for Christ’s sake, they were never going to make radio-bait.

 

Not every song is a republican anthem, but they’re all just as vicious. On I bhFiacha Linne (‘In debt to us’) they assume the position of a local drug dealer, passing out threats to those who don’t pay on time. The hook, ‘I bhfiaca linne? Caillfidh tú do chuid bhfiacla’ translates to ‘In debt to us? You’ll lose your teeth.’ They’re not fazed by these violent tendencies either, as they proclaim on ‘Guilty Conscience’: ‘Guilty conscience? No thanks. I meditate and have plenty of wanks.’ I wonder if that’s how they’re hunkering down through the current media maelstrom.

 

 

Is telling thousands to ‘kill your local MP’ rash, reckless, and irresponsible? Yes, but that’s why they said it. They’re not pocket revolutionaries, they’re a bunch of hoods from West Belfast with microphones, and that’s their point. Just as music referencing drugs and gangs reflects rather than creates that culture, KNEECAP’s politics reflect their experiences growing up Catholic in post-Good Friday Agreement Belfast. There’s a reason they felt comfortable saying what they did on stage—because they knew the audience would get it.

 

If we are to condemn them for the comments that have recently come to light, then we’d have to condemn the rest of their artistic output. In fact I’d be surprised if the MP remark was the most violent thing they said on stage that night. Although there is only so far the ‘artistic expression’ defence can go, when taken into the context of the rest of their work not only are the comments consistent but they almost seem necessary. Of course they would say that; it would be disingenuous if they didn’t.

 

If one thing is certain, this isn’t the end of KNEECAP. Their next show, unless Starmer has his way, will be at Wide Awake festival in London later this month. I for one can’t wait to see what kind of ‘fuck you’ they’ve got planned for this one, in the heart of the Empire no less. The critics aghast at KNEECAP are only fuelling the fire of their popularity, as more and more people connect with what they have to say. As they rightly point out, ‘love us or hate us, it won’t affect a bit of our wages’.

 

I have no doubt that as time goes by we’ll recognise them as part of the same punk pantheon as all the belligerent maniacs that came before. Their cultural critique is blunt, but that’s what makes it so incisive. We need bands like them to challenge society and move culture forward. They’re dangerous to the mainstream, profane and impertinent, and that’s what makes them so exciting. You don’t make many enemies by being boring, and that’s certainly not a word anyone, not even the writers of The Telegraph, would use to describe KNEECAP.

 

Words by Cameron Bilsland. Image by KNEECAP via Wikimedia Commons.