Two of the four Haunted Horses album covers feature surfaces. Their debut, 2013’s Watcher, shows a featureless, unbroken granite slab. 2022’s The Worst Has Finally Happened features stark, skeletal branches reflected in an eerie gray lake. It’s more porous and yielding, yet intact. Given the cohesiveness of their visual aesthetic, the distorted well on the cover of Dweller feels intentional, doubly so given the lyrical reference on the first song, “Dweller on the Threshold”. It’s like Haunted Horses’ pounding, pulverizing, booted stomp finally pierced the veil, allowing all the ghosts and demons, the id and subconscious, to shriek and hiss into the sky like a Goya engraving. It’d be almost unbearably grim if it didn’t sound so damn good.
With a fleshed-out lineup making Haunted Horses a trio after Brian McClelland joined for The Worst Has Finally Happened, they’ve swapped out the time-honored alchemy of guitar/bass/drums for a more avant-garde setup of synth/bass/drums, creating a sound leaning slightly more towards industrial than metal. That’s not the only shift in Haunted Horses’ world, either. After initially meeting in Seattle, the trio have since spread out over three states. Despite being created with file-sharing, Dweller still has all the chemistry and immediacy that earned them their earlier fans. If anything, it’s enabled an even more immersive, thoughtful creation, with the steely noise punk and foundry beats swarmed and haunted by eerie special FX, as if they’re playing in front of some astral portal to limbo.
Haunted Horses have never been shy about their influences. They even own the comparisons in their copy, citing the “Swans, Bauhaus, and Killing Joke” comparisons loudly and proudly. While reductive, they’re not wrong. If you like 1980s Swans, Bauhaus, and other similar death rock, you’ll likely get much mileage out of Dweller. There’s some variation in that formula, too. “The Spell” slightly cuts “Dweller on the Threshold’s” pounding post-industrial percussion with just enough streamlined death ‘n’ roll, sounding like a flame-streaked hearse tearing down Sunset Boulevard on their way to the Thunderdome.
Things keep getting gnarlier and messier from there on out. “Grey Eminence” feels like a possessed cabin being buried in a gravel avalanche. “Fucking Hell” is a juggernaut of jackhammering beats and warning sirens, with Colin Dawson bellowing “oblivion!” while some chorus of the damned wail in the wings. “Temple of Bone” switches things up, yet again, somehow sounding vaguely clubby despite its malevolent bass tone. It’s like Joy Division‘s “Ceremony”, opening a gateway to some distant Galaxy of the Necromancers.
This simple arithmetic of influences also fails to capture the essence of Dweller and what makes Haunted Horses stand out in the post-hardcore underground. It’s hard to put your finger on. Like an ancestral spirit, it seems to be always slightly beyond the corner of your eye. Dweller feels like an arthouse horror, blurry and out of focus, making it impossible to entirely determine what’s going on. Whatever it is, it’s not good.
What makes Dweller so intriguing is that, for all of its relentlessness, grimness, and brutality, it never becomes unbearable. In fact, Dweller is a joy to listen to despite being heavier than a Spanish galleon, a credit to Robert Cheek’s mix and Eric Broyhill’s mastering job as much as Haunted Horses’ songwriting. It’s one of the most enjoyable-sounding heavy records in recent memory without becoming watered down or pop. The smooth, well-rounded mix makes repeat listens much more feasible, letting Haunted Horses get further under your skin, infecting and infesting you with their bleary, spectral plague of madness and maybe a slight spark of hope.