"When she punched the Tory MP everybody here just went, ‘Fair play!’ Would I punch a Tory MP? If one were to volunteer, aye!”

Cherym drummer Alannagh Doherty is telling us how much of an inspiration it was to meet Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, her fellow Irish social justice campaigner who (in)famously gave the Conservative Home Secretary Reginald Maudling a slap in 1972 when he told the Houses of Parliament that the Parachute Regiment had fired in self-defence on Bloody Sunday.

“Bernadette’s a Tyrone woman originally and was up doing a talk at the Gig For Gaza we were performing at here in Derry,” her guitarist and singer bandmate Hannah Richardson takes-over. “It was amazing. I just sat there in awe, I was like a wee child. This is a real hero and role model to so many young women and girls in this town. When Bernadette got up to give her speech there were people chatting at the bar, so she roared, ‘Right, I’m going to talk, everybody be quiet!’ and the whole room shushed. She’s literally not afraid to use her voice. There’s such a fight still in the women from here – we’re so vocal and will not be told ‘no’.”

Somebody who fits into that category but is tragically no longer around to fight the good fight is journalist Lyra McKee who was shot dead in April 2019 whilst covering a riot on the Creggan Estate.

“It was shocking, absolutely shocking,” Alannagh recalls with a shudder. “I feel like we have a weird connection with Lyra’s death because we practice in the area and were there the night she was killed. We were driving through it and there were the teenagers on one side and police landies on the other. The next thing we all get home and hear that somebody’s been shot. It wasn’t until the next day that we found out it was a journalist and they’d been killed. The fact that she was queer as well really resonated. It literally could have been anyone who was around the Creggan that night, us included.”

Asked whether their paths ever crossed, Hannah shakes her head and says, “No, but I’ve met her partner Sarah who’s a real powerhouse in Derry for activism and very vocal about things like abortion rights. When we were having a re-jig of Foyle Pride, Sarah was at the meeting and was so full of ideas and energy.”

Cherym’s own activism is evident on their new Bikini Kill meets Blink 182 single, ‘Alpha Beta Sigma’, which proclaims: “The internet’s their church and tape is their saviour/ I’m opening my eyes to fucking incel behaviour/ They think they have their upper hand/ Well, I’ll let you in on something you don’t understand/ ‘Cause the dudes always suck, sure the girls always know/ What would his mom say if she knew how far he’d go?/ I’ll protect my peers if it’s the last thing I do.”

Which is Andrew Tate and his small-dicked disciples well and truly told. Asked recently about the systemic misogyny that still exists in Northern Ireland, Hannah spoke of “the Magdalene Laundries rippling on.” What exactly does she mean by that?

“One of the last Mother and Baby homes, which didn’t close until the ‘90s, was just down the road from us in Donegal,” she resumes. “Here in Ireland, we have such a strange history of how we treated women back in the day with the Magdalene Laundries and abortion rights, which we still don’t have in the North. That somebody would rip a baby from the arms of a mother and give them to somebody totally random is so unjust. It’s still rooted in how we look at things today.”

Nodding furiously, Alannagh adds: “They were so pro-life that they’d take a baby that was born out of wedlock and throw it in a septic tank rather than let them be with their mother. What we’re doing with ‘Alpha Beta Sigma’ is talking about our history of violence against women. A report came out last year that said the North is the most dangerous place in the whole of Europe for women. You’ve politicians here saying, ‘We don’t want to be different to the rest of the UK… except for abortion rights, which you can’t have.’ They cherry-pick to suit their agenda.”

‘Alpha Beta Sigma’ is one of the numerous standouts from Take It Or Leave It, Cherym’s debut album which makes a big punk rock noise but isn’t without its gentler moments, like the drop dead gorgeous ‘Binary Star’.

Taking care of production duties is George Perks who’s previously done the honours for the likes of Skindred, The Darkness, Wild Youth and Gavin James.

“We did the entire album in two weeks which is really quick,” Hannah notes. “George said it’s the fastest he’s ever done but the reality is that’s all the time we could afford. We had to bash it out and go home, which was good because there wasn’t time to overthink things.”

“We were doing thirteen/fourteen hour days every day which normally would have been a killer, but George pulled us through,” Alannagh says. “I always weigh people up according to their star signs – he’s a Sagittarius with a Gemini moon, which means that he’ll throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. His attitude was, ‘You really have to put yourself out there because playing it safe isn’t the game anymore.’ It was such a creative environment to be in.”

Cherym have also done well with their choice of UK independent record label.

“We were fans of Alcopop! before they approached us,” Hannah explains. “There were bands on the label at the time like Cheerbleederz that we really admire, and they’re all for the same kind of social issues that we are, which is very important to us as a band. They’re just really cool and extremely artist-friendly. The guy that runs Alcopop!, Jack, is this big friendly giant who eats, drinks and breathes music.”

As readers of the Hot Press news pages will know, Cherym stopped being a three-piece last month when founder member Nyree Porter “decided to step away” from the band for unspecified reasons which remain unspecified when I ask Hannah and Alannagh about them today. The intel I do get is that Cherym will be continuing for the time being as a duo and that “you may be getting a couple of surprises come March but that’s all we’re allowed to say,” which is very intriguing.

L-R: Hannah, their former bandmate Nyree, and Alannagh

Another key Take It Or Leave It track is ‘The Thing About Them’, a song about being non-binary – “How many times do I have to say it before you get it? It’s ‘they’, ‘them’” – that features a compilation of gormless men really not getting their heads around it.

“We were in the studio and thought, ‘We should have some playback here of all the comments that have been made to Nyree’ who goes by they/them. Stuff like, ‘If she’s not a girl, what is she?’ Some of them are genuinely confused and curious and others are very sarky about it. We were going through this in the studio with George who knew Nyree prior to them changing their pronouns and he said, ‘If they’re trying to be mocking, mock them back’ – which we did. We were like, ‘Yeah, 100%!’ and had George and Sam (the engineer) come up with these transphobic comments which are serious but sound so silly when said out loud.”

What’s Derry like to grow up in if you’re gay or non-binary?

“We don’t know whether it was homophobes but Derry’s only gay bar, which I was regular at, burned down a while back,” Hannah responds. “Alannagh and I have both experienced homophobia on seperate occasions from Derry people, which is unfortunate but I wouldn’t say it’s different to anywhere else that doesn’t have a huge LGBTQI+ community. You have to remember that city or not, Derry only has a population of a hundred thousand people. The gay community’s even smaller.”

“If you don’t know somebody you definitely know somebody who knows that somebody,” Alannagh adds with a grin.

Cherym soundtracked many a 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup highlights package last year with ‘Taking Up Sports’, which Hannah described as “a love song about the time when I had a huge crush on the sporty girl who played football – even though I myself am not sporty or athletic in any way, shape or form – and about hilariously attempting to join the football team just to get close to this person.”

The accompanying video found the then three-piece Cherym taking on Derry City players Jordan McEneff, Sadou Diallo and Cameron McJannet at the Brandywell with Sianna Lafferty, lead singer with Donegal punks Tramp, supplying the love interest.

“It was such a great day,” Hannah beams. “I’m from Derry but up till then hadn’t been to the Brandywell, which is terrible because the club’s so rooted in the community. I was completely awestruck meeting the players who we had to try – and, of course, failed – to get the ball off in the video. I was totally out of breath by the end of it, I didn’t have a puff! Jordan McEneff was at Arsenal before coming to Derry so he’s a serious player. They all are.”

Music nut that he is, I’m sure that former Derry City star James McClean will be furious he didn’t get in on the action.

“I love James McClean who’s a fellow autist like meself,” Alannagh says. “He was diagnosed with autism and spoke about it matter-of-factly which is really de-stigmatising. I’d love to sit down and talk to him.”

Over to you, Mr. McClean! In honour of their day at the Brandywell, Alcopop! have teamed up with O’Neill’s to produce a limited-edition Cherym football shirt, which is available from the band’s merch shop and is being modelled in the Dublin 1 area by yours truly.

Along with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and Lyra McKee, another of Cherym’s heroes is Sinéad O’Connor who I suspect would thoroughly approve of their own kicking against the pricks.

“If you look at our current single, ‘Alpha Beta Sigma’, a lot of it touches on what Sinéad was trying to say all those years ago when she was completely shunned, had her entire reputation tarnished and was dropped from her label,” Hannah reflects. “All of this happened to Sinéad because she was brave enough to speak the truth and say, ‘This place is a shit show.’ For us to be able to release this song now is a privilege because so many women have been hushed in the past. I’d like to think we’ve come a long way and that it’ll continue to change. Would we have got as far as we have without Sinéad? I really don’t think we would.”

Derry Girls may have given our friends across the water a basic understanding of The Troubles, but Cherym constantly find themselves having to school people there on the North.

“As someone who’s in a relationship with somebody who’s British, I still have to give her the entire rundown because if it’s not in Derry Girls she’s like, ‘Huh?’” Alannagh sighs. “I’m like, ‘Here’s the history and why you need to know this and that.’”

Take It Or Leave It joins Sprints’ Letter To Self and NewDad’s Madra as an early contender for Irish Debut Album of the Year.

“It’s absolutely brilliant seeing them in the charts,” Hannah beams. “We met NewDad and Sprints at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas in 2022 and immediately hit it off. Sprints played on the very last night of the festival, so a whole pile of us bombed into this tiny venue for their gig, which was unbelievable. It’s so great to see such a surge in Irish bands coming to the forefront now and with women in them too.”

What do they make of Bambie Thug winning Eurosong and flying the non-binary flag this summer in Malmo?

“I’ve got to be honest, I haven’t heard the song but they look amazing,” Hannah enthuses.

“I really loved the Ailsha one, ‘Go Tobann’, and the fact that her fans are called Gael Goths,” Alannagh enthuses. “It’s amazing that someone’s using the Irish language like that in something which is so mainstream.”

A quick run through of their pre-Cherym lives reveals that Hannah got her first guitar whilst in second year at St. Mary’s where she sang in the school choir; previously had drumming lessons but “was terrible at it”; made her telly debut with Dick and Dom on a CBBC show called The Music Promise – video evidence of this still exists but she begs you not to go looking for it; and was diagnosed with ADHD in her early teens. Alannagh meanwhile was in a rival school choir, hated St. Mary’s and is a classically trained guitarist who aged sixteen dismayed her parents by switching to drums and playing along very loudly to her Pantera, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot and Enter Shikari records.

Talking of whom…

“We’re so excited about supporting Enter Shikari next month in Belfast and Dublin,” Alannagh concludes breathlessly. “I’ve been a fan of theirs since I was seven-years old so, yeah, it’s all my birthdays and Christmases come together.”

• Cherym’s Take It Or Leave It is out now on Alcopop! They support Enter Shikari in the Dublin Academy (March 21 & 22) and Belfast Limelight (23).