Ohhms: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
“This is the record that I wanted to hear – that wasn’t out there for me to listen to. So me and my friends made it so it would be. It’s as simple as that.” After almost a decade, progressive doom band OHHMS and frontman Paul Waller know what they want and are indulging in some well-earned selfishness. A distinct shift from the heavy topics that informed their content to date, their upcoming fifth album Rot is the ultimate tribute to the band’s other love: horror movies.
“Our drummer Max (Newton) is bang into horror, but really it’s me that carries the obsession,” says Paul. “I still watch on average two horror movies a day so I can report back on the podcast I host, A Year In Horror. I can’t stop myself. I have an addictive personality. Thank the evil lord I never got into heroin.” It’s that passion and obsession over the most grotesque and gruesome entries into the pantheon of cinema that informs Rot; in no less than eight tracks has OHHMS used their unmistakable sound and supreme intensity to give classic horror flicks a new, aural lease of life.
With such a deep-rooted passion for horror, and an extensive episode list for his podcast, it’ll come as no surprise that Paul had a fair few films to choose from, which must have made this a cinch, right? “That was the hardest part of the whole process for me,” he says. “I had to make sure the films I chose to sing about were also going to match the ‘feel’ of the song. Swamp Thing and Body Melt were the easy ones to go for. But as for the rest, it was trial and error until I hit the vocal booth. The most complex was for A Dark Song. If you know that film it has an incredible ending shot – a spiritual completion. So we extended the ending of that song to fit around the movie. That was hard work.”
And rather than a passion project done on a whim, it would seem that Rot has been on the horizon for a while. “The horror idea has been around since the first EP but it never felt right to include it. Then we started writing Rot a few months before COVID hit. In fact, a week before covid began to decimate the UK, we were on tour playing two songs from this new album, just to see if the tracks worked amongst the old stuff. It felt good on stage so we just went head first into it after that.”
You can sense the relief from Paul and OHHMS as he talks about things feeling good. Because for many years, they zeroed in on heavy and dark themes. 2018’s Exist was all about animal abuse and species equality, while 2020’s Close was centred on the deep-seated effects of abuse. That was also their last album on their old record label before that folded in disgrace. “During the pandemic the label we were on went to shit and we couldn’t repress. We couldn’t play live and if I am being honest, I didn’t want to play live either. The whole debacle with Holy Roar crushed me – and those around me even more.” But from the ashes of the former, Church Road Records was founded by innocent members of the old label, and OHHMS stayed with that core team of Sammy and Justine Urwin. Working closely with long-term allies (and their EMPLOYED TO SERVE contemporaries) has given them that self-belief to get back to a point of doing what they love for their own reasons.
“Previously, I personally have questioned, is this what our dedicated fanbase and us ourselves as people want to put out? But Rot is closer to our first EP Bloom in that I am not concerned about the reaction,” Paul explains. Not that they’ve ever had anything to be concerned about as one of the UK’s finest, most under-appreciated bands. Here at Distorted Sound, we received their last two records Close and Exist very well indeed. And now it looks as if Rot will continue that rich run of form.
The three singles released so far – The Mephisto Waltz, Eaten Alive and Blood Feast – all carry that trademark OHHMS riffage and heart, but injected with a fun swagger that makes their performance more infectious than ever before. Even if you’re not fans of the films from which they take their names and lyrics (seriously, these are some deep cuts from the 1960s and 70s – not what you’d typically find in your parents’ DVD collection). Whether or not this is a permanent change, Paul didn’t tell us, but horror has always been present, in a manner of speaking.
“If you want to find the real horror, well, our back catalogue is full of it.” That’s not to say they’re leaving the heaviness behind to become a themed band though: “If you look just a little under the hood of Rot you will see some proper heavy themes. “We’ve just covered it in some dayglo puke.”
Rot is out now via Church Road Records.
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