“Welcome To The Sharktank” - DOPAMINE FIX
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
There’s debut singles, and then there’s statements. Welcome to the Sharktank, the first offering from Dopamine Fix, feels like the latter—a sonic gut punch that throws you into a world of shadows and teeth and doesn’t let you surface for air. This isn’t the kind of song you casually hum along to. It’s the kind of song that stares you dead in the eye and dares you to keep listening.
From the opening moments, the track oozes unease. The guitars cut like rusted metal, the synths pulse with anxious energy, and the vocals—half proclamation, half confession—hover somewhere between sermon and warning. It’s post-punk at its rawest, but filtered through something more cinematic, almost noir. You can practically see the grainy black-and-white imagery flickering behind it: a flickering streetlight, wet pavement, a figure lurking just out of frame.
Dopamine Fix call this “a mirror with teeth,” and that’s exactly what it feels like. The lyrics don’t soothe, they confront. They force you to look at the dysfunction and absurdity of the modern world—capitalism, alienation, surveillance, collapse—and realize just how far we’ve already sunk into the tank. It’s dark, yes, but not nihilistic. There’s urgency in it, a demand that you not just drift in the water, but thrash, kick, fight back.
The production, handled by Mick Heffernan (who’s worked with Gavin Friday, Howie B, and Richard Russell), is razor sharp. There’s nothing muddy about this sound—it’s lean, it’s taut, every element placed to keep the tension alive. The Berlin-Coventry-Limerick recording process feels important too; the track carries the weight of post-industrial spaces, echoing with a pan-European sense of dislocation. It’s less about one city’s sound than about a collective unease threading across borders.
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
At the center of it all, Aidan Macnamara’s voice cuts like a narrator in a fever dream—part punk preacher, part jaded poet. Meanwhile, Eoin Devereux’s synth work doesn’t just decorate the song; it claws at it, adding to the sense that nothing here is stable or safe. Together, they build a sound that’s both familiar (think early Wire, Joy Division, even Suicide at moments) and startlingly their own.
What’s striking is how little this song cares about being “likable.” There’s no sugarcoating, no hook designed to keep you comfortable. Sharktank isn’t escapist—it’s immersive, unnerving, and purposefully unsettling. In that sense, it’s one of the most honest debut singles in recent memory, because life right now isn’t polished or comforting. It’s jagged. It’s claustrophobic. It’s swimming with sharks.
For fans of post-punk, experimental electronics, or just music that refuses to play nice, Welcome to the Sharktank is essential listening. It doesn’t just soundtrack alienation—it embodies it, forces you to feel it in your bones. And yet, there’s an energy here that keeps you coming back, like touching a bruise just to see if it still hurts.
Dopamine Fix aren’t here to hold your hand. They’re here to jolt you awake, to disturb, to provoke. And if Sharktank is the first chapter, then whatever comes next promises to pull us even deeper into the abyss.
“Welcome To The Sharktank” is available now on all major streaming platforms
