A lot can happen in two years. Things evolve, people change, even wars can start and end. For me, the roots of NG Magazine will always start with The Horrors, being the first act we covered at the arse-end of March 2007. Back then, even though they’d sold out Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms like tonight, large sectors of the music press still regarded them with distaste, mainly because their hair was excessively large and faces overly made up in a neo-Goth stylee.
Gone now is the excessively large and (some might have said) mental hair, but any attempt to sum up how far The Horrors have advanced musically in these two years is totally beyond my ability. I’d always maintained that there were shards of glittering genius in their debut album and that they were technically very gifted. But seeing
The Horrors tonight is what it must have been like to witness a monumental set from seminal post-punksters Joy Division in 1979. Yes. It really is that good!
The type of sound that can fill stadiums, packed into a small venue
After five minutes of distortion clogging the speakers, The Horrors finally stride onto the stage, opening with Mirror’s Image. Their awesomeness strikes you immediately – they look flawless and sound immense. Searing guitars puncture the airwaves, alternating with Faris Badwan’s claustrophobic, brooding Ian Curtis-esque vocal. Spider (Rhys) Webb has swapped synths for Tomethy Furse’s bass duties and the results are sublime. It’s loud, brilliant & shrouded in a magical finesse. This is the type of sound that can fill stadiums, but it’s been packed into a medium sized venue. I’m spellbound.
All of their set is composed of choice cuts from their second album Primary Colours, but I’m nowhere near as disappointed as I’d expected to be at the apparent neglect of their debut. I Can’t Control Myself, with its industrial rhythmic intricacy, brings to mind the acerbic punk rock of Nine Inch Nails. The colossal Sea Within A Sea is the standout number tonight, with its prolonged rise-and-fall structure crashing over the crowd like a huge tidal wave. The synths are ghostly and minimal, very Cure-like, and build up to a densely packed, thunderous storm of sound.
It’s rare I see a band that blows my mind: God bless The Horrors for saving 2009
They receive rapturous applause when they embark on an encore that consists of the perfect punk-goth-pop of Count In Fives, Sheena Is A Parasite and, my personal favourite, Gloves. I can see why they confined their debut material to the encore as it wouldn’t have sat well with the level of sophistication displayed in the rest of their set. It seemed like a slightly odd but intriguing decision to work with video director Chris Cunningham and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow as producers on Primary Colours, but the experiment has paid dividends.
Unlike many of their worthless contemporaries (I will personally firebomb any idiot who dares to mention White Lies) The Horrors have succeeded in transporting us all the way back to the late seventies and are bringing to bear a jaw-dropping, phenomenal dosage of post-punk. The Horrors have proved beyond all doubt that musical perfection is not unattainable and its not often I see a band that truly blows my mind. God bless The Horrors for saving 2009.
My live review of The Horrors, originally appeared on NG Magazine. All images credited to Lucy Bellamy.
I walk into Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms secretly thinking that nothing will be able to top The Horrors gig here last year. But not only do Sweden’s finest gang of musicians and uber producers Miike Snow hurl egg on my face, they leave me thinking that there must be a God somewhere who’s hell-bent on shovelling glorious music down my ears.
But back to the music – I’ve listened to both new album and the promo sampler and I’ve got to say that the version of Omen on the sampler is much better than the album version, but the album version would work so much better in a live arena. On the whole, Invaders Must Die is self-consciously a live album and from what I’ve heard so far, I’m pretty impressed. It really mixes every good thing the band have done over their 15 year history – Experience, Jilted and Fat of the Land. My review will be coming soon, but in the meantime, here’s some tracks from their new release(s) to keep you happy.
