You sometimes wish that KEN mode was a bit “poppier”? Or that Godflesh was a bit sterile? You desire a Killing Joke song that is grittier? Or that Skinny Puppy’s main instrument was the guitar and not the synth? Then you got to thank Three One G for giving us the new full-length by Seattle-based Haunted Horses - Dweller is all you wished for, and a bit more.
Their fourth regular full-length (not counting the Redux-version of their debut full-length The Watcher, no, not connected to the TV show on a certain streaming service, but much better than that one!) and the second one after the 2021 addition of Filth is Eternal-member Brian McClelland taking on the role of bass butcher, Dweller is a record gripping your throat from the very first second. The songs seem to enjoy to rattle and shake you over and over again from left to right, to bind you and mess up your brain by holding you upside down. That shall not imply that we are dealing with 200bpm Grindcore attacks here, no definitely not – the tracks are all highly melodic, but when listening for all the little “side dishes” served alongside the main melodies, one will notice that this is not a quick snack but a full-fledged 36 courses molecular gastronomy menu. Let’s take ”Grey Eminence” as an example: The guitar riff have a little bottle-neck-twist to it and slowly grind their way into your memory, but the most important thing is surely the stomping, relentless beat. When you then look for all the additional elements you will get: some hollow wooden percussion; some screeching synths; some noise lines ebbing and flowing in and out; a seesaw breaking the track after roughly a minute; something like a sea buoy in the far distance; another synth line ascending unconsciously; a second break that consists only of beat and then some white noise breaking in from the side; and there a probably some other elements I simply over-heard. On top of all of it there’s the amazing vocals delivered by Colin Dawson who seems to channel his inner Cave and Eldritch at the same time – even though he probably wouldn’t consider his vocals a rallying point for the band, they surely are a focal point as he is able to deliver harmony and danger at the same time.
Even when the band seems to give us a little breather as with ”Temple of Bone” there are still many moments when they simply overpower the first-time listener, or generally people who are uninitiated with this kind of music. Yes, this is Post-Punk and Industrial, and some critics have connected the band to Swans, but there are some differences: first off, the song length – Haunted Horses are not giving you 20 or 30-minute tracks, they know about the immense value of “brevity”. Secondly, the music is much more Synth-based and less guitar-constructed. Thirdly, we get more uptempo tracks than on your average Swans record: Not trying to downplay Swans in any way, just trying to show that this band is much more rooted in stuff like Coil or Gristle, Sisters and Joke but heck how many bands have roots in the music these guys created. One thing though that I simply will never understand – how people can compare them to Neubauten? Even when tracks like ”Dweller in the Abyss” have a short, screeching industrial outro or tracks like ”Destroy Each Other” feature some seemingly self-built sounds in their intros or as the basis of their tracks – even then, Haunted Horses are not cloning in any way and surely are not building their own instruments from for example shopping carts.
Nevertheless, one thing should have become clear by now: This band is compared to some really great pioneers. Not thinking about the relevance or accuracy of these comparisons, one should see them as what they might be really: A hint at Haunted Horses playing on a very high level, writing songs that hold up and have a timeless quality to them and that the band can appeal to fans from very different bands, eras and soundscapes. Or in short: Listen to Haunted Horses’ Dweller because this is what good Industrial Noise Post-Punk sounds like in the year 2025!
