What do you think the new song from The Horrors sounds like, Dear Reader?
Nope. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
Yep, Faris Badwan and co. are back with a brand new track, and they’re not coming at all quietly.
Titled ‘Lout’, the self-produced effort is the first taster of a brand new EP, and sees the band tossing a wallet-chain lasso around the raw power that propelled their earliest releases. Where before they were a frantic bundle of nervous energy, here they’re angry, taut and – dare we say it – a tiny bit nu-metal?
Industrial sized riffs, anvil-smash beats and growling, spitting vocals, it’s brutal and brilliant in equal measure.
Faris explains: “Lout is about the relationship between choice and chance, compulsive risk-taking and pushing your luck. As a band, particularly live, we’ve always had an aggressive side and as we began writing new songs it became clear that we were heading in that direction.”
“There’s something about it which feels like a return to a heavier sound but really it’s a million miles away from anything we’ve done.” says keyboardist Tom Furse; “Keeping the sound aggressive and the beats heavy was a central tenet, everything seemed to fall around that.”
Bassist Rhys Webb adds: “It’s the nastiest music we’ve made since Strange House. An intense barrage of industrial noise. A return to the spirit and attitude of our debut LP but blasted into the future.”
All of these things are true.
It forms the lead of a new EP, set to drop on 12th March. As well as the title track ‘Lout’, there’s also two more, ‘Org’ and ‘Whiplash’, with ‘Lout’ and ‘Org’ also available on a special blood red limited edition 7″ vinyl, limited to 1500 copies worldwide.
It’s not just a revolution in The Horrors’ music. The band have also enlisted some top tier creative talent to work with them across artwork, visuals and an upcoming merch collection. Collaborating with a new creative team led by Bunny Kinney, there’ll be a short film directed by Jordan Hemingway starring beauty executive Isamaya Ffrench and scored by guitarist Joshua Third and keyboardist Tom Furse, as well as press shots by Loverboy designer Charles Jeffrey.
Flash.
Explaining their decision to move back to self-producing their own work, in part thanks to the pandemic, Tom explains: “Joe and I having both moved out of London to our respective coastlines meant that the process inherently became more about remote working, which was kinda always my tip anyway. The start of Org was me fucking around with some samples at my home studio, the sounds were so aggressive, I knew the guys would like them. So a lot of that development of the music is us whirring away independently and then coming together when we think we’ve maxed out what we can do alone.”
“In the past whenever we’ve written stuff with a harder edge it’s come from the energy we get from all playing together in a room but creating this kind of atmosphere remotely was a different challenge.” says Faris; “It’s the same level of intensity as the 100-miles-an-hour stuff we’ve done in the past but the anger is somehow more channelled. I can’t wait to play these songs live as there’s so much freedom in that kind of chaos.”
“We came to the conclusion that we didn’t need to be making this record for anybody except ourselves,” Rhys continues. “With so many platforms now lost, the pressure to deliver a single for radio or to get on TV just doesn’t exist any more and is probably all the better for it. The only thing we need to worry about is making the most exciting new music we can. We’re lucky enough to have been together for fifteen years and to be working on our sixth studio LP. It seemed like the perfect time to go in guns blazing, no holds barred full on Horrors, the way it should always be.”
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