The no-nonsense duo, comprised of Stephen Ryan on vocals and guitars and Keith Lawler on drums, have been making music together under the Giveamanakick moniker since 2003. The pair have just released their brilliant third album ‘Welcome To The Cusp’, which has already been hailed in some quarters as “the best Irish record of 2008”.

His partner in crime, 26-year-old fast-drumming-man, Keith Lawler started playing guitar in his early teens before moving onto the drums at 16 after discovering an overabundance of guitar-players on the local scene. “There were two guitarists for every band and a real shortage of drummers around at the time. Two of my first cousins are also drummers; one of them played in The Charming and the other in The Cranberries, so it seemed like the right option,” Keith says coyly.

After forming in 2003, Giveamanakick quickly built up a reputation for their explosive live shows, with their 2004 debut album ‘Is It OK To Be Loud, Jesus?’ delivering on their early promise. This was followed by 2005’s masterful ‘We Are The Way Forward’ which marked the Limerick band out as one of Ireland’s brightest new talents. Their music has been described as everything from “unapologetically loud” to “intensely barbed” and “viciously precise”, but the awesome twosome has other notions.

“We always saw ourselves as writing pop songs. Keith hits his drums really hard and I like my guitars turned up very loud but we do this with a pop sensibility, that’s the Giveamanakick way,” Stephen claims.

“We always seem to be outside of whatever scene is popular at any given time. Not everyone likes us because we are not apart of any cool music trend or because we are non-commercial but we don’t believe in compromising our sound,” he adds.

Ryan and Lawler include touring the UK with The Undertones, performing at the Electric Picnic festival and opening for bands such as The Deftones, Rocket From The Crypt and Presidents of the United States of America among their career highpoints to date. “If someone told me five years ago that we would be playing on the same stage as some of my favourite bands I would have just laughed at them,” the GAMAK frontman tells me.