An instrumental rock duo of cousins and best pals Alex Wachter and Jeff Zuback, The Horror is one of Baltimore’s most formidable new bands. After falling into music in their teens, the two cousins discovered a more experimental side to progressive rock. It was a sound born from their close bond and numerous jam sessions, with Zuback’s drums laying down the perfect foundation for Wachter’s guitar work to grow and expand. From this combined mentality and creativity, The Horror was born, and while they might have started their music careers cloaked in shadow and secrecy, they’re now ready to unleash their sound onto the world.
‘Here, In The Shadows’ is the debut album from the two-headed drum-guitar monster that is The Horror. At an hour and a half long, it’s an unholy beast of an album that is unrelenting in its approach and utterly devastating in its arrival. It’s an album built from 90’s grunge and Nintendo games, with the creative power of Zuback and Wachter’s work together studded with flashes of Nine Inch Nails, Dream Theatre, and the enigmatic Buckethead.
Full of atmospheric tones and dynamic arrangements, ‘Here, In The Shadows’ combines quick-fire, almost gothic instrumentation with slow, lurking melodies, playing on the contrast between the two to create something compelling and unique. It’s tracks like ‘The Slumbering Lurking’ and ‘Oozy’ that best highlight this approach, with both tracks starting with slow-burning, brilliantly emotive instrumentals that rapidly rise into maelstroms of heavy rock anthemics. It’s not the only trick that The Horror has though, with their full rock repertoire on show in tracks like ‘Melee’ and ‘Flying Asleep’. ‘Here, In The Shadows’ is an album of seemingly limitless highlights, but one of its biggest has to be ‘LEVIATHAN’, a three-part, twenty-one-minute odyssey of roaming guitar chords, dynamic shifts, and solid percussive power. It’s a track that truly captures the sound and scale of The Horror, taking their vision, technical skill, and will to experiment, and portraying it perfectly in song.
With so much included, ‘Here, In The Shadows’ is one of the albums that we could wax lyrical about for hours. Its an album of intense magnitude and impressive scale, and it simply couldn’t exist if Zuback and Wachter weren’t entirely impassioned about what they are doing. ‘Here, In The Shadows’ is a brilliant first look into on Baltimore’s previously hidden bands, and with reports that the duo are back in the studio recording their tentatively titled follow-up release, ‘Nightmare In Blue’, we can’t wait to hear more.
You can stream ‘Here, In The Shadows’ in full on Youtube, and grab your own copy of it on iTunes.
Score: 9/10
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