The Los Angeles–based Australians VOWWS have already earned a decent reputation, at least among the insiders. They describe themselves – or have been described – as death pop, though what that actually means remains anyone’s guess. There was even a compilation a few years back that tried to define the term, but the definition still feels like a fog with music inside it. In essence, we’re talking about a group of bands that move along a dark/goth aesthetic, updated with a full spectrum of ’90s sensibilities – crossover impulses, industrial grit, and electronic contamination.
On their third album, I’ll Fill Your House With An Army, VOWWS bring Billy Howerdel (A Perfect Circle) back behind the console, and once again the guest list doesn’t disappoint. Their debut The Great Sun featured Gary Numan and Thor Harris (then with Swans), while later Chino Moreno of Deftones appeared on a rework of their best-known track Structure Of Love. This time, Josh Freese (Foo Fighters, now back with Nine Inch Nails) opens the record with Blood’s On Fire: a slow-rising inferno that climbs from the sinister weight of Killing Joke to the angelic glare of Depeche Mode, all thunderous bass and hard-psych guitars that seem to breathe on their own.
Next comes Munky from Korn with Shudder, unsealing the Bauhaus tombs only to smear them with silicon nightmares and Nine Inch Nails-like tension. The track plays in contrasts – pressure and release, force and sensuality – with metalcore weight beneath its pulse. If this is death pop, it’s already many things at once, and none of them simple.
Between Pulls Me Apart and Hurt You, a more intimate, even melodic side surfaces: cinematic songwriting that heightens tension rather than resolving it. Silhouette channels the duo’s post-punk and synth-pop core – he (Matt) crooning in the spirit of Gary Numan, she (Arezo “Rizz” Khanjani) softening the edges with a voice that adds air and drama at once. Hurt You even carries faint surf-rock echoes, like sunlight flickering across a black puddle – fleeting, but irresistible.
VOWWS have been pushed hard so far, enough to stir a bit of skepticism about how much of the buzz they truly deserve. Their music has already seduced the fashion world – Comme des Garçons, Alyx, Givenchy, Byredo – and their opening slots for Deftones and Gojira have taken them around the globe. Yet mass recognition still feels just out of reach.
That I’ll Fill Your House With An Army is a solid album is beyond doubt: dark, carefully built, calibrated to the millimeter. Still, there’s a certain emotional distance – as if it had been assembled in a laboratory rather than grown in the night. It works beautifully on stage, where its weight and breath come alive, but at home it risks feeling like a polished object awaiting the spark of chaos. VOWWS keep dancing on the thin line between beauty and menace, though for now they stop just short of the abyss. And perhaps that’s exactly where they feel safest.