The whole experience of seeing the Horrors was like being part of a piece of early cinema; it was all in black and white. The band were clad in darkness, except for subtle touches such as their pale faces, bright white cigarettes, one of them in cream shoes and the occasional bleached streak of blonde in their dark hair. Later on at the gig, I was further lost in a sea of monochrome, the audience were made up of stripy emo jumpers, mascara-wearing punks and indie kids who had ‘gothed up’ and wore sombre tones for the evening. Judging from the way lead singer, Faris Rotter, convulsed on stage, hung from the rafters and permanently held out a gnarled claw as he sang, the movie could have been Nosferatu or Frankenstein. This black and white also captures how absolutely polarised music lovers are about The Horrors.
Critics have called them everything from the saviours of modern music to an abomination of rock history. At shows, members of the audience not feeling The Horrors vibe have been known to go so far as to lunge at band members, resulting in rioting as die-hard fans have jumped into protect their heroes. Fellow musicians have also voiced their opinions about the band, Jarvis Cocker, The View and fellow dark indie act Blood Red Shoes have all come out in support of The Horrors (though Steven from BRS once told me he wasn’t “sure how much good it will do the band getting the amount of hype they do”). However, The Automatic have stated The Horrors “just have big hair” and bad blood was reported between The Horrors and The Fratellis last year on the NME Rock’n’roll Tour. This in mind, I was disappointed by how ordinary they were.
In fairness, in true rock’n’roll style, the five-piece arrived late at the Cardiff Barfly where they were supposed to meet me and they would also be playing that night. However, when they finally arrived their reaction to the complimentary buffet had been to excitedly declare “ooo crisps!” and (as far as I saw) completely ignore the free beer – not so rock’n’roll. They all then quietly dispersed, a few settling down to watch Family Guy, which was being projected onto the slanted ceiling by the PA system.
“Excuse me, do you have a WiFi connection?” organist and part-time DJ Spider Webb asked me, mistaking me for a sound engineer. The real engineer told him they did and, with a swoosh of his black cape, retired to the Horrors dressing room where he tapped away at his bone-white Apple laptop. He was soon joined by Coffin Joe, the drummer, who broke out his own laptop. Eventually, even the lead singer slumped away to a corner and logged onto his laptop – also Apple – presumably they were all given them as gifts for appearing in the iTunes advert.
I was left with guitarist Joshua Von Grimm and bassist Tomethy Furse (from here on in, known as Josh and Tom). I began by asking them about the alleged feuds with the Automatic and The Fratellis.
Tom: “I think [The Automatic] just said some things they ended up regretting. They told us they regretted it. That’s something you learn actually, not to mouth off to the press
