Some bands treat the studio like a lab. Flogging Molly treats it like a bar fight—quick, loud, and over before you know what hit you.
"Fourteen songs in fourteen days,” Dave King says, still sounding surprised himself. “No messing about.” Their 2022 album Anthem isn’t just a return to form—it’s practically a reunion with their early selves, right down to working with the late Steve Albini. “He’s the man,” King says, reverently and irreverently all at once. “You plug in, he mics it up, and he does his magic.”
This wasn’t just some 20th-anniversary nostalgia trip for 2002’s Drunken Lullabies (though yes, that milestone was looming too). It started with a pandemic tour that never happened, a quiet stretch in Wexford, Ireland, and King picking up a guitar. “I realized we weren’t going anywhere. So I just started writing.”
Songs arrived quickly—urgently, even. And when the band finally got back together, they didn’t overthink it. They arranged tracks on soundchecks. They rehearsed with the expectation that the tape would roll any minute. When they hit Albini’s studio, it was go-time. “By the first night, we’d already recorded ‘The Croppy Boy ’98’ completely live,” King says. “Only overdubs were backing vocals and handclaps.”
Albini, famously allergic to the title “producer,” didn’t fuss. “He’s not gonna tell you how to write the song,” King says. “But if you’re ready, he’ll capture it exactly how it feels.” They were ready. Most songs were done in three or four takes.
But Anthem isn’t just a punky, sweat-soaked snapshot of a band still on fire after two decades. It’s also an album about the world crumbling—and the stubborn decision to sing through it anyway.
King points to a track like “These Are the Days.” “You can almost hear a quartet in the background,” he says. “But we didn’t want to put one there. The song still had the energy without it. You can imagine it.” That “imagined” sound became the album’s signature—raw, implied, defiant.
Lyrically, King goes deep, wide, and ancient. Irish history figures heavily, especially on “A Song of Liberty,” written about the 1916 Easter Rising. “It’s about Ireland’s freedom,” he says, “but every time I sing a song like that, there’s another conflict happening—Ukraine now.” He’s not kidding: the animated video for the track was created by two Ukrainian sisters, The Mad Twins, who were editing while bombs fell around them. “They told us, ‘We want to do this—it’s good for our soul.’” King still sounds shaken by it.
And then there’s that tricky word: liberty. “It’s been co-opted,” King admits. “But I’m not going to stop using it. I know what it means to me.” For him, it’s about actual freedom—of vote, voice, and existence—not slogans on lawn signs.
Elsewhere on the record, he pays tribute to the Cumann na mBan, the women’s paramilitary group that fought alongside the Irish men in 1916. The track “The Coming of Man” doesn’t bury its reverence. “They stood beside the men, not behind them. That’s what real equality looks like.”
For all the global stakes and historical weight, King says the album still roots itself in a tiny one-room home in Dublin, where he grew up poor but joyful. “We had nothing,” he says, “but we had a piano. Every Saturday night, there’d be a sing-song. That’s where I want to go back to. That energy.”
That sense of community fuels the live shows too. “We’re testing out the new songs in Europe right now,” King says, “and they’re going down unbelievably. Nobody’s running to the bathrooms.”
He doesn’t dwell on the past, but he doesn’t ignore it either. “Swagger” and “Drunken Lullabies” were the building blocks. “We’re proud of those. But the exciting part is that the new songs are standing right next to them now.”
Maybe that’s the true anthem: not just remembering what you were fighting for—but realizing you're still in the fight.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
