Having formed in 2008 under the name Prowler, the back story of Silverbird is much like that of many other aspiring rock bands. All the clichés are there, forming in school, being the only lads with hair beyond their collars, and gravitating towards each other through their mutual obsession with rock and Metal music.
Silverbird – Silverbird
Release Date: 18 April 2026
Words: Brian Boyle
Despite thinking the name Prowler made them sound “a bit dodgy”, there were already plenty of bands operating under the same banner. So, how they came across their new name was as a result, an indirect act of fate, and the main culprit was dodgy hearing.
“The name Silverbird came from a line in Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel, Sail on Silverbird,” Guitarist Glen Maxwell told MetalTalk. “I thought, Silverbird. That sounds cool. Turns out my hearing was shite long before the tinnitus took hold. The lyric is actually ‘sail on silver girl’. But hey. We got our band name from it.”
All this led to Glen Maxwell, Jordon Hennessy, and later on Wayne Killeen playing pubs in every nook and cranny in Ireland, mainly doing Thin Lizzy and Gary Moore covers.
So after several false starts and fourteen years after forming, the Dubliners finally get that previously unattainable album off the ground.
“We’ve made several attempts at making an album over the years,” Maxwell said. “But the finances of hiring a studio made it really hard to make anything we were really happy with. We were booking studios for one day and trying to cram entire albums into it. Always turned out badly.
“We decided we’d take a stab at making it ourselves, recording, mixing, promoting, etc. It’s been a long road, with a lot of learning. Turns out engineering is bloody hard, so it’s taken us ages.”
Silverbird are an eclectic bunch, and draw inspiration from a number of genres, but it is good old traditional hard rock and some sprinklings of prog that properly fuels them.
There’s a nice bit of ‘let’s plug it in and see what happens’ kind of vibe with this album. And nothing wrong with that if it comes off. On 3 King’s, there is no doubting that that is the case. This is a right mind-bending prog-er that swerves in all directions, if at times a tad recklessly.
With the band admitting their limitations in the vocal area, a bit of outsourcing was required. In turn, they got a lively chap named Alex Dew, who leads four out of the eight tracks. Dew is good value, and knows how to give it some welly as you will hear on the hugely infectious opener Wake Up.
Though not as good, there are similarities with this track to a young and anarchic Skid Row. And just for context, I don’t mean the real Skid Row, the Irish blues-rock group that featured Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. I mean the American one, who, let’s say, acquired the name.
Another enthusiastic screamer, Michael Werninck, does his best Paul Di’Anno on the brawling Burnout. This has New Wave Of British Heavy Metal smeared all over it, and the similarities to Iron Maiden’s Phantom Of The Opera are undeniable.
The impressive-sounding Dew returns, sticking his chest out on the vocally powerful Out In Exile, and nearly gets upstaged by the nicely placed gospel keys of Romina Barba. Great tune, but the impromptu-sounding jam at the end strips a bit of gloss off.
The Celtic Rock hooley Our Day Will Come is hands down the album’s trump card. No disrespect to ambitious tracks like Save Me From Myself and Sounds From A Shipwreck, but if they solely went down the traditional Irish rock route with songs of this calibre, we would be dealing with something quite special, very special here.
But as it stands, Silverbird are not chasing commercial success or critical acclaim. This is quite possibly a one-off recording adventure, as real-life commitments are understandably taking precedent.
It is a bittersweet release, but whatever the future holds, they have got that elusive album in the bag. There are a hell of a lot that do not get that far, so hats off.
The debut album from Silverbird is out on 18 April 2026 and is available via hyperfollow.com/Silverbird. You can find out more from the band on Instagram.
