‘Let the apparition consume me in the harrowing light of leviathan’s eyes, now I am beyond life, I am beyond death, now I am master of all that exists’ (The Spell)

Hailing from Seattle, Dweller is the fourth full-length from Haunted Horses and their follow up to 2022’s The Worst Has Finally Happened.  The band is now a trio, having added Brian McClelland (Filth Is Eternal) to their ranks, and they continue to forge industrial hardcore that is shrouded in a beguiling post-punk sensibility.

The band’s starting point is densely percussive, at times, drivingly propulsive, at others, a clanking, juddering onslaught.  Slabs of noise-infused riffage, darkly insidious melodies, and eerie flares of discordant electronics are deftly woven together in synchronicity with this relentless rhythmic barrage.  The result is a darkly unsettling yet mesmerising soundscape, arguably best embodied by the fulminating fury of Grey Eminence and the utterly claustrophobic Temple Of Bone.

The gothically drawled vocals, competing parts ominous warning and desperate urging, add a further disquieting dynamic.  The album’s conceptual focus is the notion namechecked in the title of the opening track of the Dweller On The Threshold.  The literary invention of 19^th century English novelist, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, it is essentially the idea of a malevolent spectral form that attaches itself to us, the literal devil on our shoulder, seeking to inhibit our progress as individuals.  Welcome to a world of malevolent shadows, fevered delusions, and thunderous rhythms.