In a scene where we thrive on bashing identi-kit bands and those who opt for bandwagon jumping we should at least applaud The Horrors for offering something different. The five piece goth garage punks, hailing from Southend, definitely stand out from the crowd but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. While they do their best to look like extras from the popular “Nightmare Before Christmas”, they sound terrible and debut album “Strange House” is pretty appalling. This had led to one, now semi famous, resident of Southend declaring them a band who offer style over substance and you really can’t disagree with him.
It seems that to be an alternative rock band these days you need to offer a public school education and the Horrors are no different. With lead singer Faris Rotter and bassist Tomethy Furse (know as Faris Badwan and Tom Cowan to their mothers) both attending the prestigious Rugby School you’d have hoped that some wily old music teacher would have knocked some sense into them. Instead it sounds like said teacher left them to make ear piercing screeches on their instruments and then spend the rest of the lesson dreaming about spiders and Jack the ripper.
While I acknowledge that a public school education shouldn’t mean that a person is any more likely to write good music than say a Comp school dropout, you’ve got to question quite where it all went wrong. Singles “Sheena is a parasite” and “Gloves” should be enough torture for one person as the distinctive vocals combine with some intensely irritating organ playing and that’s essentially what the Horrors are all about. It’s a unique approach but one which I ultimately never want to hear again. Third single “Count in fives”, which is arguably the least offensive track, does just enough in the catchy chorus to salvage anything from “Strange House” and with any luck this is the last I’ll be hearing from the band.
Excuse the pun…but this is horrific.
Tom