For nearly two decades, The Horrors have resisted the comfort of legibility. Each release has felt less like a continuation than a shedding and metamorphosis; of genre, of expectation, and of identity itself. Far from the preserved ‘insect in amber’, The Horrors are embracing new inspirations, band members and sounds.

Almost a year on from the release of their latest album, Night Life, the band's lead vocalist Faris Badwan sounds less interested in how the record was received on paper than in how it has lived, breathed, and mutated in the real world.

“If I’m honest,” he tells me, “I know more about how it’s connected with people in a live sense than I do in a printed sense. I haven’t really spent time reading what’s been written about it. Not because I don’t value music journalism, I do, but I just don’t find it that useful for myself.”

For Badwan, creation has never been about welcoming an audience in at the outset. “If you begin something creative from the intention of welcoming people,” he says, “it already feels like the wrong starting point. You have to begin from an insular place, trying to tap into a feeling from your own perspective first. You can think about how it connects later.”

This philosophy has quietly underpinned The Horrors’ entire trajectory. From the gothic excess of Strange House through the shoegaze rupture of Primary Colours and the volatile fragmentation of V, the band has consistently privileged specificity over breadth. “I’m not that interested in music that tries to appeal to everyone,” Badwan says.

"You have to begin from an insular place, trying to tap into a feeling from your own perspective first. You can think about how it connects later.”

“The broader it aims to be, the less specific it becomes.” Specificity, for him, is what allows emotion to travel. “Music already carries emotion,” he explains. “If you deal with something specific, it becomes relatable naturally. You don’t have to force that part.” For Badwan, it’s a relief to finish the record and the excitement comes from translating it into a live experience.

It is almost an exercise in meditation through repetition, he explains the “songs change when you play them repeatedly, little shifts you don’t predict. They grow in ways you don’t fully control. You still adapt arrangements, but there’s also space for unpredictability. That’s exciting.” After years of intermittent touring and long gaps between releases, returning to the stage has reactivated something elemental. “You still feel the same thing you felt when you were fifteen, going to shows for the first time,” Badwan says. “That doesn’t go away. That’s the unique power of it.”

The emotional gravity of Night Life was forged largely in solitude. Much of the writing process was insular, shaped by long stretches spent alone, or quietly working with Rhys ‘Spider’ Webb, the two remaining core members of the band, in domestic spaces rather than traditional studios. It is painfully fitting that night walks and insomnia was a catalyst for one of the most beloved gothic bands. “I walk a lot at night,” Badwan says. “The lack of people, the space, it puts me in a different headspace. It’s meditative. That’s where ideas surface, memories get processed.”

"Songs change when you play them repeatedly, little shifts you don’t predict. They grow in ways you don’t fully control."

Rather than writing from a place of clarity, he prefers to write toward it. “You start the writing, and then you discover how you were feeling,” he explains. “You give your mind permission to go wherever it wants. It’s like that idea of drawing as ‘taking a line for a walk.’ You sculpt it later.” In the cannon of great songwriters who drop out of art school, the visual metaphor is telling. Before music, Badwan trained as an artist, studying illustration and intending to pursue a visual career. Even now, he admits that drawing, photographing, and filming feel more innate than songwriting. “Music takes more effort,” he says. “I need the right conditions.”

Those conditions shifted markedly during the making of Night Life. Recorded across multiple locations, including time spent in Los Angeles, the album was assembled almost like a collage with fragments gathered from different spaces, moods, and moments. Yet within that flux, Badwan was keen to retain a sense of limitation. “I like setting restrictions,” he says. “Too many options can scatter your thinking. Limitations force you to be more responsive.” However he doesn’t like these limitations to be through complex recording software as ‘you lose the human feeling. Mistakes and unpredictability are what make things connect emotionally.”

One of Night Life’s most striking moments, When the Rhythm Breaks, exemplifies this philosophy. The vocal, he reveals, was almost entirely improvised. “I tried to redo it, but it wasn’t as good,” he says. “You have to trust that the first instinct is the special thing.”

Trust is something that most artists learn through time, trial and error, this trust in instinct is replicated in the visual language through out The Horror’s work. Distorted bodies and distant figures resists easy intimacy with the human form.

“You have to trust that the first instinct is the special thing.”

“Those bodies feel quite cold to me,” Badwan reflects. “I like proximity to humans more than closeness.” It’s a sensibility that aligns with his cinematic influences. He speaks of Hitchcock’s Vertigo as a touchstone, and of films like Paris, Texas for their ability to establish mood rather than narrative clarity. “I’m drawn to dissociative films,” he says. “It’s about feeling, not plot.”

That dissociation takes on a particular resonance when Badwan speaks about Australia, where The Horrors are set to spend more time touring. “I love the fact that I could actually be in Australia, because so far from home. I find it really, inspiring, creatively. It kind of has a little bit of that dissociative, anonymous feeling that I was feeling through quite a lot of this record.” However, based on The Horror’s performance style, we anticipate extreme connection rather than dissociation on those lucky enough to see them on their next tour.

The Horrors will be on tour in Australia from 10-14 April 2026. Tickets for shows are available to purchase now.