The Scratch Ooze Gold Celtic Sauce On New Album - Pull Like A Dog
- Josh Kitchen
- 22 hours ago
- 9 min read
By: Josh Kitchen / March 13, 2026
“So rise up I say but ye can’t! You're as flat as a snake’s bollocks!”
It’s the kind of line that perfectly captures The Scratch — cheeky, proudly Irish, and delivered with the kind of self-assurance that only comes from a band fully comfortable in its own skin. The Dublin group sing it on their new album, Pull Like a Dog.
Formed in 2016, the band began as buskers on the streets of Perrystown, a suburb of Dublin, before putting out their debut, The Whole Buzz. And it was buzzy indeed, blending traditional Irish folk, hard rock, and heavy metal elements — think The Pogues mixed with heavier influences like Primordial or Corr Mhóna, who write lyrics in Gaeilge.
Followed by the punchier Couldn’t Give a Rats, and then 2023’s Mind Yourself, where The Scratch really started coming into their own on tracks like “Cheeky Bastard” and “Blaggard,” the band have carved out a lane that is beginning to feel entirely their own.
Now, on their fourth album, Pull Like a Dog, out today, The Scratch — Daniel “Lango” Lang (cajón, percussion, lead vocals), Cathal McKenna (bass, backing vocals), Gary Regan (guitar, backing vocals), and Conor “Dock” Dockery (guitar, backing vocals) — have truly become the band they set out to be a decade ago when they were busking. The title is inspired by a phrase Irish Olympic rowers Gary and Paul O’Donovan used after winning silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics: “Close your eyes and pull like a dog.” It’s that sense of forward momentum and triumph that immediately sets the album apart from their previous work. The title track opens the record with an explosive gunshot, literally singing of rowing: “rowing and rowing and rowing, dark nights but the spirits glowing,” propelled by a furious guitar riff, thunderous drumming, and Lango’s commanding vocals.
Pull Like a Dog is definitely a hard rock album, with elements of meditative sludgy dirge that recall Tool, and tender folk ballads — including the haunting album closer “Ringsend,” which features Susan O’Neill on guest vocals — but above all, it is an Irish record. Irish pride bursts from the seams of every track, with Lango’s heavy accent spitting traditional Irish phrases and colloquialisms. “Stick up your harps a yipaderry-o,” the band sing on “Pullin Teeth,” featuring Dropkick Murphys member Kevin Rheault. Or take the lyric “Gold Celtic sauce drippin glaze from a rusty old face of a fireplace,” which Lango tells me is a play on the economic phrase “Celtic Tiger,” referring to Ireland’s economic boom of the late 20th century.
That sentiment is reflected across Pull Like a Dog by a band leaning fully into their identity at a time when there is less stigma around not sounding like every other rock act. As Cathal told Kerrang!: “Overall, any band around Ireland right now [has] a lot more confidence to draw from their own influences, rather than trying to sound like Foo Fighters. You have CMAT, Fontaines D.C. and Kneecap — all these acts that are mainstream, but they’re very Irish. For a long time, we just thought we were so lame, no-one wanted to sing in their own accents… and now, the pendulum’s swung back.”
I spoke with Lango and Cathal ahead of the album’s release to talk about those feelings — about rowing and rowing, pulling like a dog, and creating a victory lap of a record that is unabashedly Irish in more ways than one.
I fucking love this record. It's ear-splitting, skull-crushing, without losing its heart. I’m hoping you guys can talk a little bit about Pull Like a Dog and the evolution of The Scratch to now, because with this record, it feels like you've reached your sort of final evolutionary form.
Cathal:
Oh, fuck yeah, man. Appreciate that. Yeah, "Pull Like a Dog"—even it surprised me as being our first single. It’s been really—not surprising, I guess—but it was one of the most intense tracks. It’s the fucking fastest song I’ve ever tried to play. And we ended up releasing that first, which was exciting.
I think we kind of landed on something. Lango can probably speak more about momentum, but it’s interesting you say “evolution,” because we kind of latched onto that early on as the theme of the album. We wanted to keep moving and move fast and not maybe overthink things. I guess every musician overthinks things, but we tried to go with instinct and gut.
The fact that it was the title of the album as well—it just felt right. I remember even having a conversation with Lango about whether it should be the song and the album title, and wondering if that was mad. But then we were like, you know what? It’s grand. You can make your own rules.
It just got real hectic, real fast. We came up with an order for the album where we put a lot of the faster, more energy-filled ones at the start. It all kind of coalesced for me when we did the album cover shoot with the car. There were a couple of shots that Lango really resonated with and was like, “Ah, this is the buzz.”
It’s about keeping a sense of energy and movement. Pull Like a Dog as a track was that too—it’s probably the fastest thing I’ve ever tried to play. God bless my little fingers. But it just felt right. It felt fun to release that first and slap it out there. The reaction has been great. The fact that people like yourself are listening and saying, “I’m in,” I think it’s great.
Lango:
Yeah. It’s definitely the most sure of ourselves we’ve been going into the studio. From where we started—busking on acoustics—and then slowly integrating the amplifier side of things, not really knowing where to put them, and then fine-tuning all aspects of the band from a sonic standpoint.
Going into this album, we just knew that when we found the sounds we were looking for, we wanted to go fucking ham on them and see how far we could push it. This album was us getting that out of our systems—leaning into making an acoustic guitar sound as heavy as possible while also pivoting directly toward a really soft acoustic sound and jumping back and forth between those.
I feel like this is the album where we finally accomplished that. Who knows, though—we might just start playing acoustics all over again next time. Along the way we’ve learned to go with instinct and not overthink things in terms of staying in one sound. Just follow the nose when it comes to creative impulses. That’s what will keep us excited, and hopefully that translates into the music.
What you said about the sequencing of the record is really important, because the first three tracks are the first three singles you’ve put out so far, and they're heavy, then followed by “Cracks,” which kind of gives you a breather for a little bit. That’s necessary to keep the listener in your grasp. Sequencing records can be difficult, but it feels like you really hit the nail on the head, and then closing with “Ringsend,” a softer song with guest vocalist Susan O’Neill—it’s kind of the opposite of how the record starts, but thematically to me it’s just as heavy as "Pull Like a Dog."
Lango:
We messed about with various running orders. Sometimes we were trying to reinvent the song order of an album, not do the obvious thing. At one point we had “Up All Is Forgiven” as the first track—that was the original order. Our label said, “There are going to be a lot of new listeners. Are you sure that’s the first thing you want them to hear?”
We were like, yeah, maybe not. Then we reverted back to the absolute classic: front-load the shit out of the album and taper it off with a nice soft song at the end. When we landed on that running order we were like, this is it—let’s not fight it.
These lyrics are so great too. On “Pulling Teeth” there's—“you're as flat as a snake’s bollocks!" What an insult. Talk to me about these lyrics.
Lango:
I have to thank a good friend of mine, Anthony McMahon, for sharing that one. I can’t remember if he sent it to me out of nowhere—he was like, “This will make you laugh.” I was like, man, that’s going in a song somewhere. I don’t know where, but I’m using that.
It fit nicely into “Pulling Teeth.” I’m glad you picked up on it.
For the American listener or maybe anyone not Irish—what is “gold Celtic sauce”?
Lango:
I think it’s a loose reference to the "Celtic Tiger" era—the economic boom in Ireland in the ’90s and 2000s—and the sense of entitlement that came with it. We started having more money, and with more money comes more notions. It’s just a loose reference. I was trying to mesh it up so it wasn’t too on the nose.
I think you can hear the pride in those notions. I know you guys talked recently about bands from Ireland leaning into their accents, Like Fontaines D.C., where you hear the accent in the songs. There’s a pride in that. Talk about that a little.
Lango:
I only started singing when the band started—I was just a drummer before that. Two people definitely inspired me. One was David Balfe from a band called The Blind. He also releases music as For Those I Love. I heard a demo around 2010 where he was screaming in a Dublin accent, and I loved the way it sounded. The other was Damian Dempsey. He’d be a national treasure in Ireland. Massive influence on me. He sings in his own accent too.
I remember thinking that if I ever started singing, I’d try to use my own accent. Over the last ten years Ireland has really begun to embrace freshness. We take influences from other countries and fuse them with Irishness—whether that’s in lyrics, sounds, or accents. It’s led to some class music being put out, and it’s still growing.
Cathal:
Yeah, the Irish scene is firing. It feels vibrant. There are 17- or 18-year-old kids in garages making amazing stuff. It breeds confidence. There’s pride again in Irishness and fusing it with American music, European music, African rhythms—whatever.
What's the most Irish thing about each of you?
Cathal:
Personally, I love me mammy!
Lango:
I’m terrible at on-the-spot questions. Cathal, what’s really Irish about me?
Cathal:
You’re quick to laugh and find the funny in things. On tour, the worse the circumstances get, the more you start laughing, and then everyone else starts laughing. Old folk songs are the same—the happiest songs ever, but about murder and kidnapping.
Lango:
It’s a double-edged sword though because I'll laugh when people seriously injure themselves. I’ll say I love a cup of tea. I dol love a cup of tea.
What would you describe the music The Scratch makes? People sometimes call you Irish folk metal, but it feels like it's more than that. what would you call it?
Lango:
We’ve been puzzled by that question for years. When the label asked how we wanted to be described, we said “mongrel music,” because it changes from one minute to the next. We can’t settle on a genre.
I think the record is like that tool. I hear things likeTool, I hear so many things fused together. That’s what makes it exciting.
Lango:
Thankfully it’s one of those groups that allows influence from all angles. We all get so excited about the most random genres of music, like anyone does these days. It’s not like we’re fucking unique — Spotify exists — so everyone on the planet that listens to music now has an eclectic taste in music. It’s no different for us.
We’ve just found that it would be such a pain in the ass for us to limit what we want to seep in in terms of influence when we’re writing music. That just seems like a pain in the ass, you know what I mean? I’d rather everyone be excited at all times by the music we’re putting together.
For us, that means just letting it all hang out — whatever notions, whatever direction we want to take a particular tune. We’ll just trust that it will sound like us in the end.
What songs are you excited for people to hear that aren’t out yet?
Cathal:
“Horsefly.” That was the last track we wrote. We needed one more to flesh out the vision. Gary had the chord progression. There was a big “HORSEFLY” written on a whiteboard because [Conor] Dock got eaten alive by one on a Patreon video call. Lango ran with the lyrics. It came together quickly.
Lango:
I have a soft spot for “Roses and Poses.” It was the first song we wrote with Gary. The chorus is right up my alley. It didn’t come together easily—we had to fight for it—but I think it’ll be great crack to play live.
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