Sabbages

Sabbages are a chaotic cabbage-clad collective of craic connoisseurs that captivate crowds with their creative
cauldron of carefully concocted ceol, comprised of a consortium of céilí-core combinations. Founded by Marty Grá
(Monaghan) with members from Galway, Dublin and America - and influences from further afield - they put their
own spin on trad, putting traditional instrumentation such as fiddles, low whistles, mandolins through effects units
and mashing it up with heavily distorted guitars and hard, loud and fast drums. They breathe life into ancient and old
handed-down trad tunes by rearranging their structures and reharmonising songs with atypical, sometimes dissonant
chord progressions. Familiar traditional tunes, seen in a new light, occasionally interspersed with interludes of
seemingly chaotic sonic crescendos and improvised solos before the next tune in the set is burst into in unison.
They play a mix of re-imagined trad and ‘trad-core’ originals, combining traditional inspired melodies with elements
of grunge, math-rock, psychedelic and art-punk. Their live show offers an entertaining blend of live music and
cabbage-centric theatrics, such as cabbage conjuring and ritual sacrifice. The audience becomes a part of the show
through ritualistic chanting and by throwing cabbage leaves at the band (plants in the audience hand out leaves).
Their lyrics – sometimes in English mí-cliste agus sometimes in Gaeilge beagáinín bhriste – sporadically let slip clues
to a wider world of the cruciferous cult’s lore; a world wherein brassica worshiping Druids from an alternative ancient
Celtic Ireland traversed through the veil and ended up in our cosy little postmodern capitalistic hellscape.