Metal calls Mitchelstown man out of the shadows
Shadows Calling made their debut in May 2023.
Hailing from Mitchelstown, Darren O’Keeffe was always into music, but he only took up the guitar five years ago. The arrival of lockdown gave him more time to mess around with the instrument, and to his surprise he found himself writing songs.
“I didn’t even know I had the talent to sit down and actually write a song,” he relates. “And I just started trying to do it in covid and it just started coming piece by piece.
“At home myself, I’d be banging away on the guitar and I’d be trying to put stuff together. Then I thought, do you know what, I’d love to start my own band. And it just rolled from there, really. I was determined then just to find other musicians that would be interested in doing the same kind of thing.”
So he went looking at the online musicians wanted site Bandmix and through that he connected with guitarist Scott McGowan, who was in Reverend Green Goes To Jail and before that The Ideal End. McGowan invited his friend Barry English as drummer. English has a long and storied history in the Cork metal scene going back to the mid-90s with Sludhehook and including I’ll Eat Your Face and currently with Bodydrinkers. The final piece of the jigsaw is bassist Mike Jordan from alt metal combo The Magnapinna.
“He actually bought a drumkit from my sister’s husband,” chuckles O’Keeffe, “and that’s how we found him.”
The essential part of the puzzle is his sister, Jen Vaughan, who has fronted a variety of bands, including Inhale The Fall.
“The only singer I wanted to front the band was my sister because she’s a phenomenal female vocalist. I wasn’t getting anyone else,” Darren explains.
“When I started writing my own stuff I said to Jen, if this takes off I want you singing. She’s a great front woman. She has the personality for it. She’s as mad as a brush.”
The name came to him while watching a Korn video that depicted screaming shadows. Darren and Scott write the lyrics together and even though the music is a collective effort the sound very much reflects O’Keeffe’s musical heroes, such as Alice In Chains, Therapy? and Iron Maiden. In March they released their debut EP Spirit Chaser. Recorded by For Ruin’s John Murphy and mastered by Marko Tervonen of Swedish death metal band The Crown, it features four tracks filled with rumbling riffs, topped off by Jen’s soaring and commanding vocals.
Shadows Calling made their debut in May at the Pav and O’Keeffe relished his first live appearance. And with an estimated 60 songs written, he is looking forward to more gigs with the ultimate aim of securing festival appearances.
