Dublin alternative hip-hop collective MARKIEVICZ, comprising J.F.O, xcaliber, and objectsnwo, unleash their latest single ‘End Like This’ a high-octane follow-up to their breakthrough track ‘Blackened Hands’.
Where their debut channelled guerrilla warfare and historical resistance, ‘End Like This’ turns the lens inward, capturing the disorienting ache of things falling apart and the stubborn refusal to let them.
‘End Like This’ excavates the emotional wreckage of letting go. Anchored by the repeated refrain “Never woulda thought it would end like this” the song moves through the pain of holding on to what must be released, channeling years of global displacement into three minutes of defiant reflection.
Having lived between Singapore, Barcelona, Berlin, and Florence, J.F.O, objectsnwo, and xcaliber thread their verses with the disorientation of leaving home and the hard-won wisdom of getting comfortable in the uncomfortable. What emerges is not mere melancholy but a diaspora-hardened rallying-cry refracting international experience through an Irish lens, weighing the decisions that carved their path to now.
The track’s genesis is pure MARKIEVICZ: spontaneous, digital, and dangerously immediate. J.F.O discovered a snippet from Downtown Kayoto on TikTok and instantly recognised its flip potential. That same evening, with their sold-out debut at Anseo looming less than 24 hours away, xcaliber arrived at J.F.O’s house to prepare. What began as a casual show-and-tell erupted into a session — xcaliber loaded the sample into Ableton’s Push 2 and constructed a tension-inducing soundscape of crashing rock drums, warbly synth bass, and a crushed sin. While the instrumental took shape, J.F.O and objectsnwo wrote their verses in real-time, recording the track that very night. The result is a sonic collision where Downtown Kayoto‘s light-hearted melodic overtone collides with the heavy delivery and digital decay of the verses, marrying the rhythmic pockets of rap with the explosive urgency of rock.
With ‘End Like This’ MARKIEVICZ continue to carve out a space that resists easy categorisation—where hip-hop cadence collides with rock intensity, and personal storytelling expands into something generational. If ‘Blackened Hands’ was the battle cry, ‘End Like This’ is the comedown that reveals what the fight costs—and why it continues.
As anticipation builds for their debut project ‘GUERRILLA‘, which arrives on the 29th of May. MARKIEVICZ show no signs of slowing. With summer performances set to be announced in the coming months, the trio are poised to bring their volatile, genre-defying sound to stages across Ireland and beyond—pushing further into a world they’re not just navigating, but actively reshaping.
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