Skying by Horrors

Skying, the Horrors' third album, came out on XL Recordings in July 2011 in Britain and a month later in America, and it's the first record the Southend-on-Sea band produced on their own, cut in a studio they built themselves in London. You can hear the freedom in it. The garage-goth snarl of their early days gives way to something that billows: post-punk bones wrapped in neo-psychedelic swirl and shoegaze haze, Faris Badwan's voice floating somewhere inside great clouds of guitar and synthesizer.

"Still Life" was the herald. Zane Lowe played it in full on his Radio 1 show two months ahead of the album and crowned it his Hottest Record in the World, and it went on to the station's A list, more mainstream airplay than the band had ever had. Expectations ran high after Primary Colours, with Mojo and Q both lining it up as album of the month, and like the two records before it, Skying made the UK Top 40.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.