Rioghan are a Finnish band sitting between progressive metal, gothic melancholy, and modern heaviness. Second album Kept arrived in February 2025 via Inverse Records with ten tracks of detailed, emotionally heavy songwriting. Now they open another cycle with Chapter I: Frozen, a Madonna cover that launches the upcoming Frozen EP and connects back to the Kept story. In interview singer and main lyricist Darcy Rioghan explains how this era was built and where it’s leading.
The timeline runs skewed. While debut album Different Kinds of Losses was still rolling out, a good stack of Kept demos was already done, and by the time one release hits the world the band are usually deep into the next one. ”We’re constantly working” she says.
Underneath, the core writing method stays the same. ”The lyrics are chosen from poems that already exist and then adapted to the songs” Darcy explains. Some tracks grow from full instrumental demos, some start from a melody, some from ideas the other members bring in and the band then bends into shape together. As a title, Kept ties it all together, every lyric deals with being held somewhere, kept from something, or otherwise restricted, each song taking a different angle on that experience rather than one straight concept line.
Opener Dreams was always meant to start the record. The slow synth build and full-band kick feel like a clear ”first step” for this line-up, more band-driven and polished than before. Lyrically it follows a character accused of living in a dream world, pushed toward everyone else’s ”normal” and refusing, choosing instead to look for their own version of reality.
Deeper in, ”Hands” pulls from some of Darcy’s hardest personal experiences. Writing is her way to process them, and releasing the songs is a chance for someone else to gain a different perspective on the same subjects. ”Writing about the most difficult things is what I want to do and what I feel I can do” she says. ”Skin” works differently again, more like one five-minute moment of despair held in place, a direct scene without big metaphors to soften it. There is also a personal favourite she always wants to lift up, Motion, circling a specific kind of loneliness, not being physically alone, but feeling separate and ”other” even in a room full of people.
“Frozen” starts the next chapter. The idea to cover Madonna’s 1998 hit came from Teemu, who had wanted to do something with it for years. Darcy was drawn to how minimal and fragile the original is, yet how much dynamic and emotion it holds. In their version they push those contrasts harder, pulling the quiet parts lower and the heavy sections higher, carefully threading a full band into what was originally a synth-driven track instead of just ”playing it with guitars.” The Frozen EP, due next spring and built around five songs with their own videos, is already finished and waiting for its release schedule. She sees it as a loose sequel to Kept, a closing chapter that finally answers whether the record’s main character gets out of the places where they were held. After that, the plan is to move into something new, more experimental song structures, more small pieces from unexpected genres fused into the sound they’ve now found.
Rioghan interview 04.11.2025
Darcy Rioghan
Producer: Janne Vuorela
https://rioghan.com/
Picture: Rioghan
Rioghan interview (Finnish) from 2021: https://anti-commercial.media/rioghan-19-10-2021-finnish/
