We super loved Horrible Night by England’s finest doom purveyors, Moss, so we asked them a couple of questions about the record, their past and what the future has in store for this heaviest of trios.
It’s been quite a while since your last full length (although there’s been a couple of EP’s since 2008), what has the band been doing in that time? Was it a case of nailing the sound or did external factors play a part in the delay?
We’ve all got pretty busy lives and had things we had to get on with and take care of there… but we had been slowly getting material together since 2010, starting with Horrible Nights. We did a short euro tour with Electric Wizard that year and a couple of other one off shows since…but most of the time has been spent in the dungeon getting ready for the record.
I understand that your guitarist (Dominic Finbow) is now based overseas, how does that impact on the band in terms of writing/recording and then playing live?
It doesn’t really effect things…it’s been like this for a while now and we do stuff when we can, which is usually as often as we’d like anyway
As we mentioned in the review, it seems like Horrible Night is the record you always wanted to make; is that something that you agree with?
Yeah…not to knock the old stuff, but I think we had pretty much painted ourselves into a corner with that. There just isn’t much longevity in that style, and none of us were really fans of or listening to anything like that for a very long time…it’s as if we were trapped in a moment in a way, stuck in 2004! When we started out, we were very much into bands like Grief, Thergothon…but I think that before the time of “Sub Templum” none of us really listened to anything like that anymore, and naivety getting the better of us we just carried on with what was expected of a band like ours than making something that truly reflected our musical tastes, and pretty much remade our first album. When it came to “Horrible Night”, it made sense to make a record that we’d actually be into and want to buy ourselves, honouring our own tastes in music. We could make albums like “Cthonic Rites” with both hands behind our backs, but that’s not what we want or are into at all… We’ve always loved psychedelic rock and 70’s heavy metal and I think that shows on the album, but it’s still us and our core fundamentals are still there, it’s slow and dark and very heavy…a friend said it sounds like cavemen playing “Master of Reality”, which suits me!
Reuben Sawyer’s artwork for the album is incredible, why did you approach him for the cover art for the record and how does it fit with the album?
I’d seen some stuff he’d done online over the years and loved it, a piece he did was one of the first things that popped into my mind when I started thinking about who could do the art… I sent him the record and told him what some of the songs were about, and just told him to go for it… draw what you hear… it’s quite open to interpretation, if you listen to the lyrics with the artwork in mind you can make your own conclusions with what it’s about. They fit together perfectly.
Doom is absolutely massive at the moment, both in terms of sound and it’s popularity; how do you think MOSS fits in with the modern doom movement and why is this genre so damn popular right now?
Well we’ve been around for a while now, but to be honest I don’t pay much attention to the modern doom scene. I know we’re firmly a piece of it, but I’ve just got my nose stuck in too many old prog and psych records to notice what’s going on around me!
As far as it’s increasing popularity, I think some of that has to do with how the world seems to be becoming more and more desensitised to things that would’ve previously repulsed them… accept the darkness!
There’s the obvious comparisons to say, Black Sabbath to be found on Horrible Night, but are there any influences on the band that people would be surprised about?
The Beatles! I always liked them, but while I was getting ready to record vocals and being pretty stuck for lines and melodies I spent most of my time with a completely Beatles-obsessed friend who’d have them playing a lot when we got really fucked up…and it got me thinking about what I could and couldn’t do with my vocals and what kind of vocal melodies I could use here and there. It doesn’t sound anything at all like The Beatles of course, but Horrible Night has melodies…influenced by The Beatles, hahah!
You’ve just been announced for Damnation Festival and you’re hitting the European road along with a set at Roadburn soon; that’s quite a lot of touring for a band that seems to play live very infrequently – is that through choice or is your style something that plays against you at times?
It’s the new stuff…it’s re-energised the band, and we’ve realised we should get out there and play it. We couldn’t have done that with Sub Templum, none of us would want to tour that album…old Moss gigs really were hard work. But from the rehearsals we’ve had with this new material, it has the potential to be a lot more fun live. Well, not really sure if fun is the word, but I am looking forward to it. We’re just going to focus on stuff from Horrible Night…but if the mood takes us on any of the nights we could drop something old into the set just for the hell of it!
Do you have any ideas as to where Moss goes from here? After the Spring tour and into the Damnation appearance?
More weed and more horror… I want to start on the next record sometime next year… who knows? This could be the year that fucking finishes this band…
Cool, thanks!
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