Why thousands of listeners worldwide are streaming Gaelic metalcore

Get ready to hear Gaelic as you’ve never heard it before – in ear-shattering metalcore music.

Under the name Gun Ghaol, musician Colin Stone has combined his passion for the loud fusion genre with his family heritage to put a surprising twist on songwriting in the language.

It may most often be found in the domain of rural choirs, waulking songs and the legendary Runrig, but Colin’s debut album has proved popular, with listeners ranging far beyond the Celtic heartlands.

“The response has been overwhelming,” Colin said. “The record’s been out for a week and has been streamed by people in 51 different countries, and over 10,000 times.

“The fact there are people in Indonesia, the Maldives and Guatemala who have listened to Gaelic metalcore blows my mind.”

Gun Ghaol

Former STV presenter Colin inadvertently started the project when he uploaded a video to the social media platform TikTok in 2022.

He found there was an audience for it, with clips racking up tens of thousands of views and fans starting to ask when his next song was out.

“Social media has been the vehicle, but it’s also because it’s something people have never heard before that it’s worked,” he said.

“It might have just been 15 seconds of me screaming in Gaelic in front of a mobile phone, but it was enough that people started asking when the album was coming.

“I clocked that if I actually put something out, it might get more than a few dozen listeners, one of whom will be my mother!”

It was from his mum, Christine, a Gaelic singer and writer, that Colin first picked up the language during his childhood in Castletown, Caithness.

“My mother’s from Lewis and when I was growing up she’d speak Gaelic to us,” he said.

“In the far north of the mainland, Gaelic’s not really a thing, so we weren’t having conversations in it or learning it in school.

“It was only in my late teens that I really began to consider this was my heritage. It’s my mother’s first language. She actually learned English in school.

“That’s where this desire to learn Gaelic came from and it married with my passion in life, making music.”

‘Screamy music’

Metalcore is popular worldwide, combining elements of hardcore punk and extreme metal.

Bands from the genre like Bring Me The Horizon and Bullet For My Valentine have  played to huge Scottish crowds at the likes of Glasgow’s OVO Hydro.

© Supplied by Colin Stone

“It’s what my Presbyterian minister father would describe as screamy music,” Colin, 32, laughed. “He’d often come into my bedroom and ask me to turn it down.

“The vast majority of songs in the genre are screamed or growled rather than sung, and that’s something which either puts people off or engages them.

“The songs are conducive to moshing; flailing your arms around. Fast drumming, distorted guitars and music that’s designed to make you want to move in quite an erratic fashion.

“I would say very proudly that the record is of a high standard, both from a production standpoint, but also in terms of the genre. It sounds like other bands, despite having done all this self-taught.”

While it’s the first time Gaelic has entered this genre, a number of experimental acts have, in recent years, blended traditional sounds with more modern genres.

Celebrating Gaelic

Acts like Celtic fusion band Niteworks and Skye electronic duo Valtos have incorporated elements of dance music with traditional instruments from the islands.

But Colin hopes that musicians can also start to detach from that and normalise Gaelic across the genres.

© Supplied

“They’re still holding on to a shred of the tradition,” Colin explained. “Their music is brilliant but if Gaelic continues to do that, it will stay in that smaller box where people only think of it in terms of the trade scene. Gaelic can be so much more.

“What I want to see more of is what I’ve done, leaving the fiddle, the squeeze box all behind and instead just using the language as if it were German, Spanish or English.

“As I found with Gun Ghaol, there’s an audience for this. That’s what I’d say to other artists perhaps already dismissing their chances of success.

“Look what I can do screaming into a microphone at 190 beats per minute. If people in more than fifty countries have enjoyed it, then you can do the same thing in your genre.”

Gun Ghaol’s album Leum (meaning ‘jump’) features collaborations with Gaelic rock band BALACH, Finnish metal outfit Lowhill, and even a cameo from wrestling legend Mick Foley.

There’s also a version of Gaelic poem Òran na Cloiche, with Colin’s eight-year-old nephew Ruairidh on backing vocals.

Its release coincided with the end of the Royal National Mòd in Oban.

“I would love for the Mod to invite Gun Ghaol to play in Fort William next year,” Colin added. “Imagine a venue with 150-200 people in there, flailing some limbs. I’d love to see the Melvich Gaelic Choir letting loose in the mosh pit!

“That would be such a good way to cap off a special celebration of Gaelic music and culture.

“Whether it’s the Mòd, Celtic Connections or Belladrum, they could all benefit from  expanding their range of diversity, adding something fresh. There’s much more to Gaelic than what people expect.”

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Gun Ghaol’s Leum is available to stream on a variety of music platforms