The Horrors

To understand The Horrors you need to understand what it takes to be a free and independent spirit in 2012 -to do things in your own way and on your own terms at a time when nearly everyone is else is desperate to fit in and all too happy to follow. And that is exactly what The Horrors have been pulling off ever since they emerged from Southend on Sea back in 2005.

They burst onto the scene like the teenage mutant offspring of The New York Dolls and The Jesus and Mary Chain. They were a shock to the body-rock, doing everything rock n roll at its purest and prettiest is supposed to do– energise, excite, divide and polarise. The early Horrors shows were an explosive and vital reminder that great pop music is primarily made by the young, for the young. As a consequence they made a lot of people feel very old and tired indeed. Teenagers turned up to their gigs, blind with mascara and dumb with lipstick, often clashing with other kids who simply did not get what they were witness to. Gigs often turned into mini-riots: “I got a lot of things chucked at me,” says guitarist Joshua Third, “I never really understood it, because if I’d gone to see a band playing, like, really mental, frantic music I’d think: right on, listen to that.” The Horrors were that perfect entity - a band excited and besotted with the idea of playing rock n roll. And that lust for the new and the visceral proved to be fantastically infectious.

The Horrors’ debut album and its follow up are two of the most startling and thrilling in recent years. Strange House was a filthy-sweet attack on pop’s lazy, shallow, callow consensus, inspired by the carbon monoxide highs of the garage rock that brought the band together. Tom Furse’s dirty, dazzling synths, and the electrifying flashes of wilfully trashy, incendiary guitars road a thunderous railroad of a rhythm section courtesy of drummer Coffin Joe and Rhys Webb’s bass. Faris calls it “the sound of kids being really excited by new possibilities.” It had a necessarily polarising effect on those who heard it. “We didn’t set out with the intention of pissing people off,” explains Faris, “we just weren’t really that willing to do anything to avoid that happening.” So The Horrors wound up pissing off exactly the right people. It’s this attitude, which flies in the face of the focus group sounds that have laughably come to be known as indie, that makes The Horrors truly independent. And their next release, 2009’s Primary Colours, was emphatic proof of that.


Primary Colours was as dramatic a departure from the screaming insanity of Strange House, as Strange House had been from the overweening mediocrity it railed against. The aggression and melodies were all still present, but now they were buoyed up by a symphony of swirling organs and psychedelic guitar that lent the album a grand cinematic sweep. The critics loved it, recognising in its scope and ambition a band determined to make a lasting mark on rock n roll. It won album of the year awards, including the NME and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. “Well, it’s nice to get recognised because making records isn’t easy,” says Faris. “I don’t believe anyone who says it is.”

The Horrors new LP, Skying, takes up where Primary Colours left off and they began recording it the moment they stopped touring that album. They also decided to produce the record themselves in a studio they have built for themselves – something that has afforded them even more independence. “I wouldn’t call it a studio,” says Joshua, ‘It’s more like a lab.” And he’s not kidding. A studio is where you go to record, a lab is where you conduct experiments and Skying is the boldest yet of The Horrors experiments.

Both dense and expansive, insidiously poppy and stubbornly arty, Skying sounds like nothing else the band has ever done before whilst sounding entirely and fixatedly like The Horrors. “We wanted to find our own space and basically have our own workshop at our fingertips, to do whatever we wanted there,” says bassist Rhys Webb. “It just felt really natural and relaxed. And I actually think that kind of set the tone for the record. We felt quite relaxed as a band, writing together. There’s that element of freedom and space we had to do it in the music. When we’re working, we’re just trying to write better music and become a better band and make a better record than the last one. The songs on this record have kind of opened up: there’s more space and melody. It feels more focused.”

Skying is named after one of the bits electronic lab kit made by Joshua, who, unusually for rock n roll holds a first-class degree in theoretical physics. “The Grand Master Skying Mark 5 is a 20-stage phaser, It’s a bit hard to explain, but I can draw it for you. Imagine each one of those notches is a phaser, a sweeping effect. And the more notches you have, the more pronounced the effect. It’s pretty much beyond any phasing that you can do, ever.”

At the time of writing the album had reached number 5 in the album charts, outsold their previous albums in the first week of sales and produced a hit single ‘Still Life’ that was A listed at Radio One for 4 weeks.

So how can you best sum up this most original and inventive of British bands? How can one best understand and explain The Horrors? Well, to paraphrase Margaret Mead, never doubt that a small, thoughtful, passionate and committed group can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.