Could it be possible that those unruly Limerick fiends Steveamanakick and Giveamanakeith, better known to Irish rock fans as Giveamanakick, have…whisper it…grown up? Their new album, Welcome to the Cusp certainly seems to suggest that the process of musical growing pains is now behind them.

Older, wiser, bolder but certainly not quieter, GAMAK's latest is a subversive charmer, a hardcore record in disguise. The duo have moved on from the unrefined, frantic, garage-band-on-steroids who catapulted into the conscious with their debut Is It OK To Be Loud Jesus, before following that up with the highly regarded We Are The Way Forward. Bravado or not, that particular title now seems almost prophetic. Welcome to the Cusp is all that is good and great about Giveamanakick, conveniently wrapped up in a nice, neat little package.

But for all its glossy production and huge pop hooks, GAMAK can still throw down in the proverbial rock & roll slugfest – support slots with the likes of Lightning Bolt, Dinosaur Jr, Deftones, Melt Banana, Isis and Liars have left an indelible effect on them and it's abundantly clear that GAMAK have learned a trick or two along the way. It's early days yet, but Welcome to the Cusp must surely be considered a certainty for a Choice Music Prize nomination?

Of course it's all well and good having an album that flex's it's muscles and gets you in a warm and embracing headlock, but if you can't produce the goods live you aren't going anywhere. GAMAK have no such worries in that department. Their reputation, and indeed sound, was forged in the live arena where they have routinely blown audiences away. Welcome to the Cusp gets its official release in May, but GAMAK will be hitting the campaign trail this week with a show at Cyprus Avenue on Friday, April 18. The Cork Independent caught up with guitarist and mouthpiece Steve to discuss their latest installment of sonic tomfoolery, the notion of a definable GAMAK sound, the aging process, Sunday morning mass slots and Bono's hat. That and world domination.

"We do feel that this album most accurately represents what the 'Giveamanakick sound' actually is," says Steve when asked about Welcome to the Cusp, a record which belies it's players fondness for wild, veering tangents by presenting itself as their most accessible to date.

"Well, to be honest, we feel that these songs are possibly the most structurally challenging ones so far. That could be just us though...but it's great to hear that they don't come across like that. There was no pre-conceived plan of attack really, these are just the songs we've been writing since 2005 when our last album came out, so it's been three years since anyone has heard new recorded GAMAK stuff, and this is the result I guess."

Musically and lyrically speaking, Welcome to the Cusp sees GAMAK further honing in on and harnessing the influences that have always been prevalent within their music, particularly the driven dynamics of hardcore, off-kilter time signatures and pop melodies. In the case of Welcome to the Cusp however these traits have become more cohesive in each others company, with previously obvious influences becoming less apparent as they move closer to their own sound.

"We were never really into hiding our influences, in so far that on the last record working titles included 'The QOTSA One', 'The Smiths One', and 'The Hatch 77 One'. The Hatch 77 one stuck, because they're one of our favourite Limerick bands. But yeah, the idea with this record was that it'd be the quintessential GAMAK sound, as in, we'd hope that people would recognise traits in our songs as 'pure GAMAK' or something. 'Pure GAMAK' as in, "listen to that, that's puuurrre GAMAK that is", not like 'the pure distilled beauty of GAMAK" or anything like that. We're still very much influenced by all our favourite bands. But we're also influenced by our surroundings, our friends, and our situation. Particularly lyrically, I'd find myself writing about the minutiae of a particular situation I might have found myself in, or trying to solidify a ridiculous notion I might have had about something or someone."