After nearly 20 years making music, there are few bands who’ve created a canon as determinedly innovative and consistently critically-acclaimed as The Horrors. Emerging as zeitgeist-shaking garage-goths on their 2007 debut ‘Strange House’, before taking a sharp left turn for their Mercury-nominated follow up ‘Primary Colours’, since the beginning they’ve roamed freely between genres. 2011’s ‘Skying’ won the NME Award for Best Album; ‘V’ was heralded as “a triumph” in a five-star Guardian review, while 2021’s pair of EPs – ‘Lout’ and ‘Against The Blade’ – marked a new chapter with their most industrial, uncompromising output yet.

 

Whilst the end results have changed, however, at their core has always been the same unbending commitment and bloody-minded allegiance to the cause. And so, whilst sixth album ‘Night Life’ sees the band once more shapeshift into a new form, with a new sonic outlook and a new line up centred around the core duo of vocalist Faris Badwan and bassist Rhys Webb, in some ways The Horrors are still as they ever were.

 

‘Night Life’ is the first Horrors album not to feature the five original members. Having reached a crossroads in 2017 following fifth album ‘V’, magnified by lockdown and a feeling that a return would have to be all or nothing, drummer Joe Spurgeon bowed out early in the demo-making process, choosing to focus on family life. Initially stepping back from touring, keyboard player Tom Furse left around the same time while guitarist Josh Hayward appears on the record but has been in and out of the sessions. “They are all still The Horrors and, if they want to work together in the future, then of course they can,” explains Rhys. “But what that left was the core of me and Faris directing the record together.”

 

Initially slimmed down to two, the decision to even embark on the process of LP6 was one only made possible by the pair’s total commitment to the band. Beginning work making DIY demos in Rhys’ basement flat, thriving on the immediacy of, as Faris describes, “shortening the distance between having an idea and expressing it”, for a long time the two musicians shut themselves away, putting all their energies into writing songs with the single-minded belief that’s fuelled all their best work. On top of the line-up change there was Covid, a label move (The Horrors are now signed with Fiction) and a steady bleeding dry of all their remaining funds. Lesser bands likely would have caved, but lesser bands likely don’t care as much as The Horrors.

 

When producer Yves Rothman joined the project, the pair soon found their world expanding in all sorts of new directions. They describe Yves’ collaborative input as “like an extra member of the group – plus,” Faris laughs, “he’s used to dealing with the total chaos of Yves Tumor, which must have helped.” At the producer’s request the two musicians flew out to his LA studio, using the last of their money to go all in and see where the pairing would take them. With Yves’ help, they started to dissect and rebuild the songs, contorting them into experimental new shapes.

“The LA session felt like the beginning of recording. It felt real, finally. We were in a position where we had to make it work, and we were in there non-stop,” says Faris. “Neither of us drive – surprise surprise – so we had a 40 minute walk to the studio every morning and we’d walk back at night when the streets were empty. We were there for six weeks and had two days off the whole time,” notes Rhys.

 

While they were out there, another figure stepped fully into their circle. Having recently produced her debut solo record, Faris brought in keyboard/synth player Amelia Kidd to contribute parts and production ideas. “We would bounce recordings from LA and she’d be in Glasgow working on them,” recalls Rhys. Faris adds: “I felt like she could bring something unique to the project.” By the end of the record’s sessions – finished off, post-LA, in a Christian scientist’s AirBnB in Tottenham – Amelia had been signed up as a full time member.

 

Into the fold, too, came drummer Jordan Cook, formerly of Telegram. “He has great taste in the way he plays and we’ve known him for a while, Rhys has played with him in a few other bands, so the group already feels like it gels,” says Faris. Craig Silvey, who’d previously worked on ‘Primary Colours’, ‘Skying’ and ‘Luminous’, meanwhile returned to mix the record.

 

Despite all the change, much of the energy of ‘Night Life’’s writing and recording came from a desire to bring back the visceral spirit of their early work. “We wanted to be cautious not to smooth over the rough edges,” says Rhys, “to leave room for the more inspired live performance, mistakes and quirks that were crucial to our early recordings.”

 

Couple this with the integral input of Faris and Rhys’ new foils and it roots ‘Night Life’ in a world that’s unequivocally The Horrors but also, once again, something different. It’s a record of weight and space, of melancholy and euphoria; a record that has the ability to make bedfellows of seemingly disparate ideas as only The Horrors can.

 

‘Ariel’ begins the album with a kind of ritualistic intensity, named after “the protector angel” (“Ariel opened up a whole sound world that sets this record apart from the other ones,” says Faris). Conversely, ‘LA Runaway’ closes the album’s nine tracks with a cinematic sweep of joyful melody and one of the record’s more straightforward lyrical ideas. In between, they traverse propulsive yet understated terrain on ‘Silence That Remains’, and grizzled intensity on ‘Trial By Fire’. ‘Lotus Eater’ is a seven-minute electronic exodus that began life rooted in lockdown-based apocalypse before reincarnating as Faris slowly began to lose his mind after months of insomnia.

 

“There was a period where I was waking up every night at 4am and taking pictures of this security gate keypad…” he says. “I do feel like I was going a little bit mad during the record, but only because I was so desperate to make it exist.”

 

The ‘Night Life’ they speak of here is not the vim and vigour of pubs and clubs. It’s the thoughts that happen under the cover of darkness; the places your mind takes you when the rest of the world is asleep. In LA, as in London, Faris would walk around after dark, finishing lyrics. “Something about the loneliness of LA fit the mood of the songs,” he explains. During the writing process, his Palestinian father suffered a heart attack and ‘Silence That Remains’ details nights of waiting for updates, unable to rest. Meanwhile, on a daily basis, he was watching horrific atrocities committed against his people and culture. “At a time when Palestinian identity is being erased, and it feels like there are so few Palestinian musicians with a profile in the West, Palestinians should be reminding everyone of their existence,” he says. “Just saying ‘I am Palestinian’ feels dangerous.”

 

And so, perhaps more than ever, “Night Life” finds The Horrors open and laying it all on the line. Wading through the heavy experiences of these past years, there may be grief and alienation, loss and fear on this record, but there is also a capacity for joy. “The one benefit of being a musician, the thing that you can count on, is you get to express your creativity and connect with that part of yourself,” Faris says. “I don’t really feel like I have a middle setting when it comes to caring about things, and so I can’t even describe music as an outlet because that makes it seem like it’s a valve letting off steam. I can’t separate it from the rest of my life. It’s the good part of my life. It’s the part where I get to be fully present.”

 

In spite of the darkness, The Horrors’ sixth album is a testament to the tenacity of a group of musicians willing to fully commit and make whatever sacrifices necessary to bring it to life. It’s an album of contrast and emotional release, and one that thrives off the total investment that it was born of. “I think underneath everything, the enthusiasm and inspiration comes across and you can tell that we were having fun making it,” Faris says. “I hope that’s the feeling people are left with when they hear the record.”

 

‘Night Life’, then, is the sound not of a want but of a need: to keep pushing; to leave nothing behind; to make the best Horrors album in their power. Six records in, and they’ve not dropped the ball once.