We caught up with The Horrors at Southampton, Guildhall as the band came to town to play the NME tour with The View, The Automatic and Mumm-Ra.

How's your day been so far; what have you been up to?
(Josh) We've been around Southampton town centre... A lot of people questioned our sexuality, and asked if we'd painted our trousers on. We went to a good record shop though.
(Tom) Yeah not much. Sitting around, there's a lot of sitting around on tours.
(Josh) I wrote an new song as well, it's amazing.

How does this place compare to other towns you've played?
(Josh) What, Southampton?
Yeah.
(Tom) It's alright.
(Josh) Yeah this place is amazing, probably one of the best venues we've played. It's so nice, it's like playing Grand Central Station.
It's not very good for sound though.
(Josh) Is it not? I thought it would be alright with the carpet and...
I think it's because it's an old building and they can't work on it, they just stuck a stage in it.
(Josh) Ends up as one big bassy mess.

You've played an NME tour before, with the Fratellis and Maccabees, do you like the NME tours or do you prefer your own?
(Tom) We prefer doing our own tours. Just because we take all our records with us and we get to choose our support bands, you know, we try and take along bands that we really think people should hear. It's more independent, each night was like a big party, and a lot of fun. We've been having fun on this one but it's still a bit faceless, doesn't really feel special.
You had a few issues with Fratellis last time?
(Josh) Erm, not really.
Ah the media lead us to believe that there was something big going on.
(Josh) I don't know, apparently they thought we had beef with them, or something. That's what they said. I never even met them. Never met them. You're on tour with them and you don't see them. I think I saw one from the other side of the room, but that was it.
How does this compare, is it more integrated?
(Tom) Yeah.
(Josh) Yeah it's really good. Yeah all the bands have got on. Got on especially well with The View.
I saw Mumm-Ra kicking footballs at you during sound check.
(Josh) Yeah Noo's a weird one, he came up to me and said, if he had to fuck anyone on the tour it would be me. That was a bit weird. They're all little characters, but weird characters. They're all school-friends.

How did you guys meet then?
(Josh) Well I met Faris in a butchers. We were butchers assistants. We both loved music and talked about leaving the butchers perhaps and starting a band. We didn't have any other members though, vocals and guitar would be a bit rubbish. But when we went to the abattoir to pick up some cows, we me the other three. And there was a spare room there, so we practised in there. After two practices we got really excited and started gigging. After that gigging we got two more gigs, and so on.
(Tom) I met Joe in a medical trials thing. We had like liquid nicotine injected into us. It was really nasty. Everyone else there was a crack head without a job, so we started talking about music we liked and stuff. It was in a liquid form, they just did it to see what it would do to you, how much nicotine your body can take. But I stopped doing that, the money's not even that good.
How much do you get for it?
(Tom) Hundred quid, but it's not worth it to have that much nicotine put in you.

Where are you guys from?
(Josh) The South-End area.
(Tom) Three fifths of us.
(Josh) Faris is from Rugby.
(Tom) I lived on the same street where Jack The Ripper killed his first victim. I didn't know that until after I'd moved in and I was woken up by the Jack The Ripper Tour.

You formed in the Summer of 2005...
(Josh) Was it the Summer? Hmm.
(Tom) Hmm.
(Josh) More like the Autumn. Yeah it's been really fast.
That's what I was just about to say, you've come a long way in a short period of time, has it been hectic?
(Josh) It's been hugely exciting. Yeah, just great. We did our first record and got offers, and the first studio we went to was Edwin Collins Studio, which was amazing. Yeah it's just been fun.
(Tom) We came back from our second gig like, what a ridiculous idea, what if we got to release a single, it would be so great. The idea was just so exciting.
(Josh) What we were doing was so different, I never thought anyone would have the balls to let us release it. And someone did.

Is the album all recorded now?
(Josh) Yeah.
Out in March?
(Tom) March 5th.
You excited about that?
(Josh) Definitely.

So far you've only had an EP out...
(Tom) The EP wasn't even meant to come out in this country.
Yeah I was going to say, released in the US.
(Tom) Yeah they don't have singles over there, so we just released, well it's kind of a singles collection I guess. And somehow it made its way over here by all the imports, and it's really annoying, because first people thought it was our album, and on the album we rerecorded a lot of our stuff, quite drastically, changed them a lot, and people just think we're putting out an album with half stuff that's been put out before. There's only two songs from before and they've been totally remixed.
(Josh) One was rerecorded.
(Tom) Yeah, that's the annoying thing. But we've only had singles out here.

What's the response like out in America?
(Josh) It's really good, we played Industry shows though. I remember one, it was full of men in suits, and we started playing and they were like, rioting. And LA, everyone stood there with their arms folded, no one wants to be seen moving. We went there and the whole crowd knew all the words and went absolutely mental.
(Tom) Four hundred people in a place none of us had ever even been.
(Josh) The stage was good too.
(Tom) Yeah it was good. Quite surprising, but yeah.
(Josh) We did South by South-West as well.
Must have needed a lot of sunblock.
(Tom) It was very hot.
(Josh) I actually hired two people to carry parasols.

I read that you've been perceived to be more about fashion than music?
(Josh) Are you actually just lying?
(Tom) Is that a quote?
No I read it somewhere. And on Popworld he said...
(Josh) ...Popworld is a piss-take.
(Tom) Basically we absolutely despise fashion, and we have done shoots for magazines, but we absolutely despise that world. The way we look is, well, fashion is something you really have to spend a lot of money on. You get told what to do, whereas our fashion is a reflection of the music we make, and we don't spend...
(Josh) The comment doesn't even make sense. I mean, if we were into fashion, we'd dress like the Strokes and play Razorlight music. Or be a new-rave band.
Tom: I think fashion's into us, but we're most definitely not into fashion. If you aren't really into us then you might so "oh they're about..." Every band has an image, even if it doesn't appear so on the surface. Look at the Arctic Monkeys, they definitely have an image. If you look at Bloc Party, if you look at Kaiser Chiefs for fuck sake. But the ironic thing is that no-one notices it. They get theirs bought for them, whereas we just buy ours from Primark, and get accused of being too fashionable.

You make your own guitar pedals, is that correct?
(Josh) Yeah, that's right.
That's pretty cool actually. Is it just distortion or is it all your effects?
(Josh) Erm, I don't make delay pedals. I use a lot of fuzz and modulation pedals, and I've learnt how to build filters which is quite fun. We used synths you can plug guitars into, which we used on the record, and I have to build them to use live as they're expensive bits of kit.
(Tom) Huge synths, and they've got more knobs than an aircraft. Huge, like, huge. Me and Josh instantly fell in love with these massive machines. They just made outrageous noises and so we tried to incorporate them into our music as much as possible. Which I don't think is something any band do, any guitar bands do, these days. It's something that lots of bands ignore, experimenting with sounds. But the Arctic Monkeys were in the studio when we were, with the same producer, and there's a picture of Alex sat down at a Hammond Organ and a Moog. And I thought that was quite funny.

I think that's about it actually. Short and sweet, anything else you'd like to say?
(Josh) Erm, no.
For the wonderful people of the internet.
(Tom) Oh it's the internet? I never get to read our interviews.
(Josh) Start buying records.
(Tom) Yeah start buying records and stop downloading our music.

One final question, yes or no answer, do you like lemon meringue?
(Tom) I am a fan.
(Josh) No, I don't really like meringue

Interview by Thom And Joe