One of the most vivid childhood memories I have is from a kindergarten trip to the Planetarium. I was a 5 year old sitting under the massive overhead domed screen, onto which the universe was projected, flying into planets so we could see them up close. At one point, we approached the sun. The entire screen filled with the sun’s molten light, and the MC told us to stand up and reach our hands up to it. As the light got brighter and brighter, and the children around me reached higher and higher, I was filled with terror. I dove under my seat, balled up until the sun faded off the screen. I had a vivid sense of being so tiny and vulnerable in that moment, realizing I was no more than a particle on a particle of dust to these giant heavenly bodies. I knew then I could never be an astronaut.
Having that visceral sense of my own insignificance at such a young age left a mark on me, and it draws me towards music that explores it — like this new record from HAUNTED HORSES, Dweller. Today we’re stoked to be premiering their new video for the single “”Dweller on the Threshold“,” and rather than asking us to reach our hands up to the sun, Haunted Horses is imploring us to dive down into an abyss. Grinding, staticky riffs, vanquishing percussion, and malevolent vocals threaten to weigh me down and throw me into a pit of apathy and nihilism. It’s the feeling adults turn to when they experience the ego death I had in that one blinding moment as a child, but I refuse to look away from the light. Dweller comes out via Three One G Records on January 10th, 2025 — get it here. Right now, dive into the abyssal industrial punk of Haunted Horses’ “Threshold.”
The album is a spiritual successor to their previous work, delving into intense, unsettling themes with renewed vigor: the fear and anxiety tied to the obliteration of one’s self or identity, and the unknown outcome of this dissolution. The concepts came through a series of meditations, some of which didn’t make sense until the process was complete.
