31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Scotland's first Gaelic metalcore band to debut at Belladrum
The Glasgow-based four-piece have build an online fanbase over the last year and intend to make an impact at Belladrum before making way for the likes of The Hoosiers and Example.
The festival takes place just a few miles outside of Beauly, near Inverness, and vocalist Colin Stone said: '[[Gaelic]] music is often associated with accordions, acoustic guitars, and the fiddle. Gun Ghaol began as a way to combat that stereotype.
"It's brilliant that Belladrum have recognised the following we've been building online and wanted to bring it to their audience.
Read More
'We don't wear masks, there's nobody famous involved - it's just riffs and breakdowns in a language that deserves to be heard."
Gun Ghaol will be the heaviest set across the three day festival that includes others such as Natasha Bedingfield, Supergrass and Texas but the group are aware of that and are keen to offer something different to audiences.
Colin added: "We're something completely different for audiences.
"Metalcore, our genre, has been performed in English for decades. There are other bands whose lyrics are in German, French, Russian. So I thought: why can't we do this in Gaelic?
'It's a language I've spoken all my life. It's my heritage. And if we can bring it to people in a way they've never heard before, that's fantastic.'
Figures from the 2022 national census found that the number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland was on the rise, with strong increases in school-age children and young adults.
Gun Ghaol themselves are fresh off the back of releasing 'Tog Dealbh', the second single from their upcoming 'Sgrios' EP with Dundee-based producer Kieran Smith.
