HORRENDOUS was a band that took a while to grow on me, but with their latest album “Ontological Mysterium” being a real corker, I was converted at last. It’s an excursion into a quirkier, more technical form of death metal than most of the knuckle-dragging primitive destruction that’s hot right now. It doesn’t hurt that the album avoids the excesses of the technical side of the genre and is generally easy to get into.

It’s taken 14 years to perfect the model and get the Good Doctor onboard, so I thought it was fair I make up for lost time and try to hook up with the Philadelphia-based outfit. Drummer Jamie Knox (who puts on a heck of a performance on the new album, by the way) was kind enough to venture into the Labs and speak with me…

WORMWOOD CHRONICLES: Greetings and hails to HORRENDOUS! The new album “Ontological Mysterium” is upon us. I’m curious about the title of the album. Some death metal bands just put together “cool words” for a title, but I know you must have a meaning behind it. What’s the story behind it and was it your first choice for the album title?

JAMIE KNOX: Damian (Herring, vocals & guitar) first created lyrics and the title for the song “Ontological Mysterium”, and once we heard the name, we realized it had to be the record’s name. It had a beautiful sound and feel to it, and it conjured feelings of wonder and curiosity. It raises the question of where things come from, how things come to be, how they all relate, and in my mind, it tempts you to look forward as well – to where you are going. This was the only title that we seriously considered for the album.  

WC:. Something that really impresses me about the new album is its compactness. It comes in at less than 40 minutes but is packed with more ideas than an album more than an hour long. Is this just a natural function of the way you write or is it something you have to work hard at?

JK: When we write, it is a continuous process in which we are constantly moving our song drafts toward the tightest version of what they can be. We craft each piece carefully, ensuring that it says what it needs to in only the amount of time necessary. We don’t want songs to drag, since the listener loses interest. This way, the album remains interesting and has more staying power in the mind of the listener. 

WC: I know you use a kind of spontaneous method to come up with songs...you wind up “surprising yourself”. What would you say was the biggest surprise you had from the new material? What came out of nowhere to make itself known?

JK: It’s tough to pin down a specific part or aspect that was most surprising. We knew that we wanted to bring back some of the melody and more “epic” feel that was a bigger part of our pre-”Idol” albums, but we still didn’t really know how that piece of the puzzle would help to shape the album into what it became. It’s like you have an idea of injecting a feel into a record, but while you’re in the weeds carving out the songs, it is hard to fully see the final product. Only during the recording process, after the songs are given additional life, does the full picture start to truly come into focus. The point here is that we didn’t really know how this record would truly turn out – the songs went through tons of editing and rethinking throughout the long writing process, and I’d say even we were surprised to get the album that we got. I think our success with infusing the songs with a live/jam/improvisational feel was also surprising – it is something we wanted to try, and I feel that it translated well. Also, we experimented a ton with vocals, and I think we were all a bit shocked at how well it worked. If you pay attention, the range of vocal types is pretty vast compared to our older material, and I’d say compared to most contemporary bands too. 

WC: I would imagine with all the off the cuff jamming you do, you come up with tons of riffs and ideas. Do you have a “riff bank” full of stuff you haven’t used yet?

JK: Not a riff bank exactly, but we do have unfinished ideas for a number of songs at any given time. Usually these would be a collection of parts or riffs built around a theme. Many of these will likely see the light of day, even if in a new form, in future HORRENDOUS material – several of the songs on OM were born from ideas that existed during the “Idol” writing sessions, or even going as far back to “Anareta”. We have a good amount of material and ideas that weren’t ready for OM, and we are anxious to start working on the next record. 

WC: The HORRENDOUS sound is often said to have a jazz-like vibe. What are some of the jazzy influences you’ve drawn on for “Ontological Mysterium”?

JK: Alex (Kulick, bass) is the biggest jazzer in the group, and I think that is probably obvious from his playing. His jazz influences are vast, and I won’t attempt to tease those out, but he basically was a big thrash kid in high school, and he somewhat lost interest in metal after that. He then threw himself into the jazz / experimental music scene in Philly, which is big, and spent many years in that world before we met him and pulled him back into the realm of metal. For me, there are definitely parallels between his playing and some of the fusion greats, like Jaco Pastorius. Matt and I are particularly interested in the jazz fusion world – a lot of the bigger acts like MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA, late 60s to early 80s Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock solo work, WEATHER REPORT, Tony Williams, Allan Holdsworth, etc. I think the influence that I take from jazz is the playfulness – the willful engagement with the unknown in an open and curious way. 

WC: Now for the obligatory “pandemic” question...did the lockdown affect the band negatively or positively? I’ve encountered many acts who have went both ways on this question.

JK: Definitely both. The negative aspect was not seeing Damian for maybe a year and a half, and his parents’ house is our main place of practice and recording. Basically, we had to put the writing and recording as a full group on hold for that period, and we had already begun the recording process. In this time, Matt and I quarantined together for many weeks, and we spent a ton of time playing music together since there wasn’t much else to do. At the time, we had a different idea of how the songs on OM would be – we were planning to have a small number of long songs that would make up the bulk of the album. After much jamming and listening through different demo versions, we began to think these songs didn’t feel quite right. So, we put them all back on the chopping block and continued to whittle away and add new ideas, which ultimately led to the forms of the songs we have on the record. 

WC: Is there any type of sound or music that is “off limits” for you to use? I’m guessing you are more open to outside influences than most.

JK: I’m sure in practice there would be musical ideas or styles that might feel like “too much” to us, but on paper we don’t set any limits for ourselves. We allow ourselves to really explore all ideas we have, regardless of how foreign they might feel at first. Eventually, certain things feel right, and others don’t, and we incorporate those that add to the greater piece. I think this openness to experimentation is a big contributor to the continuing evolution and expansion of our sound. 

WC: Is there one particular song on “Ontological Mysterium” that is a favorite? Or another one that’s tough to play and perform?

JK: I don’t think I have a favorite – at different times, different songs hit particularly hard. We’ve only played the title track, “Cult of Shaad’oah”, and “Preterition Hymn” live so far – the first two are fairly tough to play but they are fun. I think we’ll try to incorporate “Chrysopoeia” into the live set for our next shows, and that may be tougher to fully recreate live. 

WC: The song titles are very intriguing on the new album. “Chrysopoeia” (The Archaeology of Dawn) and “Neon Leviathan” are two that get me wondering. What kind of method do you use to come up with these?

JK: We do put a lot of thought into song titles – both in terms of how they represent the lyrics/music, but also they fit together in a track list. We like to have titles that grab the listener’s attention and also stimulate a degree of wonder. Usually, we have a list of ideas for each song title and end up voting to decide which is the best fit. We may make further edits to it depending how each also fits along the rest of the titles on the album. 

WC: Is there a theme running through the album? A central idea?

JK: We did not set out to give the album a central theme, and all of us except Alex write lyrics. Still, the album does seem to have a unifying thread throughout it. I suppose the theme of striving to stand up and be the protagonist in your world – to have the courage to embrace change as needed, and to become a god in your own right -- is definitely a big theme. Other songs deal with the danger of unchecked growth and expansion, which perhaps serves as a balance to the previous idea. 

WC:. Damien uses an astonishing amount of vocal styles on the album. Is this something that comes naturally to him or does he really have to work hard at it?

JK: He does, and Matt uses a number of styles as well. I suspect people have a hard time discerning who is who at certain times, especially when the voices depart enough from their typical sound. For both of them, this vocal experimentation came together pretty naturally – instead of going in and thinking “I’m going to try to scream in this section and try to make it sound like X,” we usually had them improvise vocals – basically to try whatever came to mind as they had the mic in front of them, without thinking too much. This is how we ended up with the varied vocal takes you hear throughout the record. 

WC:  There was mention that it is very hard for band members to physically meet any more. How much of a challenge is this and does it make the band stronger in some ways?

JK: It is becoming harder with time unfortunately. Alex now is in college in upstate New York, Damian still lives outside Washington DC, but in the past few years he got married, bought a house, and has his first child on the way. Matt and I keep busy with music, including a number of other projects, and are also busy with our jobs. So, it is tough and we really have to plan to make the meetings happen. However, when we do meet, we make the most of our time and try to be efficient. From the “Idol” sessions onward, Matt and I tend to spend a lot of time together working on song ideas, and we usually have a decent skeleton of a song before we bring it to the rest of the group and flesh it out together. That isn’t to say we don’t also develop songs as a full band – “Neon Leviathan” came together during a full band jam, for example. But since we are all apart more often now, Matt and I try to put in work on our own to ensure the band has working material consistently. 

WC: It’s been a while since HORRENDOUS has played live extensively. How are things shaping up tour-wise for “Ontological Mysterium”?

JK: We did a two-week tour in the Southern and Western US about a month before album release, and we are planning additional US shows to celebrate the release later this year. There is also talk of coming to Europe in 2024. Basically, it is hard for us to tour extensively, but we feel that we didn’t tour enough around ‘Idol”, and we want to do our best to get out and play for everyone this time around. 

WC: If you could have dinner with any 3 people from history, who would they be?

JK: That is a very difficult question. Without thinking about this too much, I’ll stick to the music world and the three people I think I’d like to meet and speak with. I’ll go with Robert Fripp from KING CRIMSON, Tom G Warrior, and David Bowie. All three of them possess abilities and approaches that I greatly admire, and I would love to learn from them. 

WC: Has HORRENDOUS ever had a “Spinal Tap” moment where things went wrong that you could share with us?

JK: I don’t know if I have anything quite as funny as that, but I can think of some examples of things going wrong. On this two-week tour that I just mentioned, the Southern US was going through a terrible heat wave – the high temperatures in Arizona, for example, were around 115 degrees Fahrenheit. We of course break strings and drum sticks occasionally when we play live, but on this tour, I was breaking at least a pair of sticks each night, and I think there were probably 5-6 instances of a string breaking during the set, which is a lot – new strings kept being put on the guitar and it didn’t matter. I bring up the heat wave since I suspect the extreme temperatures must have affected the integrity of the strings and sticks. But we started to treat these string breaks as an opportunity for the rest of the band to do a free jam during the set – each time a guitarist had to stop playing, the rest of us would break out into an improvised piece to keep the momentum going. People actually loved it, so we’ll have to do it in the future. Another thing that sucked on that tour – we played a show in El Paso, Texas and I think literally 5 people bought tickets. We played in a venue that could hold probably 300 people but it was completely empty, and the promoter paid us only a fraction of the guarantee. It definitely did not feel good. 

WC: Any final words for the faithful?

JK: Thanks to all who care about the music we make – it helps to keep us going. Hope to see you on the road soon!

HORRENDOUS