The Horrors - V (2017)

V is the upcoming fifth studio album by English rock band the Horrors. The album will be released on 22 September 2017 by Wolf Tone/Caroline International.

Сan we have some more dry ice, please?” asks the Horrors’ frontman Faris Badwan, from a stage already resembling an airport smoking lounge. As the room gets further fugged, he deadpans: “I was joking, actually.” Lit solely from behind tonight, the Horrors are only visible as silhouettes with good hair and open collars, frugging anonymously. A perverse move, perhaps, for a group previewing a forthcoming fifth album, V, which drags their grand, gothic, garagey noise from the shadows and recasts it in throbbing electronics, drum-machine pulses and the most fully formed pop of their career.

But the proudly artful Horrors could hardly make their incursion into the centre-leftfield without embracing such perverse gestures. They return tonight, after three years apart pursuing spin-off projects, with fresh material showing newfound ambition and focus, opening with the shuddering Hologram, where neon Tubeway Army synth lines bolster Badwan’s eerie, Numan-esque chorus as it asks, “Are we holograms? Are we visions?”

As you might expect from a band known for their exquisite taste, the Horrors pilfer from the dawn of synthpop with discernment: the skyscraping stomp of Press Enter to Exit suggests Duran Duran scoring Blade Runner, all windswept futurism with sharp hooks, while Machine’s elegant robo-melancholia suggests Berlin-period Bowie, if he’d swapped Eno for Moroder.

But there’s more going on here than just reassembling well-chosen references (something the Horrors have been guilty of on occasion). Where the Joe Meek-esque organ peals on Who Can Say – one of a number of Horrors oldies given enthusiastic performances – wink knowingly to a certain record-nerd demographic of the band’s fanbase, the new material is less cult-ish, and unabashedly emotive. The squalling, elegant melancholia of Weighed Down – in its own words, a “lullaby to a soul in slow decline” – would get lighters waving if dry ice hadn’t choked all the oxygen, while the closing Something to Remember Me By is a brooding, slow-burn epic, an inspired pairing of New Order electro-throb and widescreen guitar noise that leaves the indie club trappings behind and reaches for something bigger.

V is exactly the record to hurl the Horrors into the proper big time, though soon this eldritch Ant Hill Mob will need more than dry ice and strobe lights to keep their new audience’s focus. Tonight, though – perhaps the last time we’ll be able to catch the Horrors in a dingy shoebox – this smoke-slaked kabuki show is more than enough.