When Horror dropped last year, it was well worth the privileged price of entering the collected world of The Mekons. I was lucky enough to find their first LP—"The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen"—in a thrift store many blood moons ago. This began my foray into the ever-changing world of The Mekons and their many ever-changing forays into the different worlds of their output.
Here we go again… just when you think they can’t top their past release, they up the ante and, in this case, release a dub version of Horror. Horror is a well-crafted composition on the demise of our current world state (yeah, I am looking at you, oh supreme moral majority oligarchy), mapping out exactly how historically we managed to arrive in these stormy, high, drowning seas. The legendary post-punk collective filtered all that systemic rot through their usual chaotic, multi-vocal brilliance—a jagged blend of rock and roll, punk, and country-tinged melodies and beyond.
But beneath the hood of those original studio tracking sessions lay a darker, parallel life—cue Twilight Zone theme. To extract that shadow entity, the band handed the tapes over to a trusted co-conspirator with deep roots in their storied history: veteran NYC-based producer and Pere Ubu alumnus Tony Maimone, a partner in crime since their first shared UK tour back in 1988. Now that is a collaboration that can’t fail by any means.
The resulting companion release, Horrorble, isn’t some lazy cash-in remix album or a superficial genre exercise. Maimone treats dub as a weapon of subtraction (yes, a math lesson here, folks). Rather than offering simple edits, Horrorble zeroes in on pure space and echo, hollowing out the dense arrangements of Horror to leave behind a vast, paranoid landscape where deep basslines stretch, dissolve, and carry the immense historical weight of our current moment. It celebrates space and leaves a lot to the imagination. The vibe here is less Kingston and far more aligned with the gritty, post-punk architectures of London and New York. Remember the Rip It Up and Start Again theory.
The radical nature of this project is clear right from the track sequencing, which Maimone completely upends to reframe the record's emotional arc (and I am not talking about Emo, you big crying babies!). Horror’s raw, guitar-heavy closer, "Before The Ice Age," is dragged to the very front to open Horrorble. Swathed in an atmosphere reminiscent of an early '90s 4AD single, Sally Timms’ vocals are isolated into an intimate, chilling, haunting whisper directly into your ear. It feels like a pirate radio broadcast from the middle of a nuclear winter—which begs the question, would there be a radio broadcast during a catastrophe of that magnitude?—while, as the band's literature notes, "asteroids are falling in between the blows of the policeman’s truncheon." Except for the ring of that truncheon thing.
Where Horror hits with direct, rock-and-roll confrontation, Horrorble reframes that urgency through hypnotic downbeat decompression. On "War Economy," the original's mid-'80s Gang of Four bounce is dismantled, replacing rock defiance with a treated, vocoder-infused version where the critique of military-industrial greed is carried by an inescapable, low-frequency hum. Gee, wonder if they are referring to current affairs? The pretty, carnival-esque indie pop of "Sad and Sad and Sad" retains its second-place slot on both records, but Maimone's version blows it up wider, revealing a strangely beautiful, timid Brit-folk root beneath the despair. Nick Drake on Dub.
Similarly, the techno-laced guitar pop of "Glasgow" is enveloped in a teeth-chattering, echoing dub atmosphere that somehow leaves its melodic foundation completely intact. On the heavy rocking standout "Mudcrawlers," the album delivers a stellar alternate take featuring a guest spot from Skindred’s Benji Webbe, injecting a jagged bar-bottle bounce that perfectly marries first-generation punk attitude with classic UK sound-system methodology. For those wanting pure studio chaos, the vinyl and digital configurations include the bonus track "Dub Crawlers"—a surging, splashy offshoot that sounds like Adrian Sherwood himself hostily hijacked the mixing board.
Other triumphs include "The Western Design"—the most overtly Jamaican-tinged moment from the original sessions—which lands beautifully as track five, and "Surrender," where the Augustus Pablo-style ghost hovering over the original version finally steps out of the John Carpenter fog to fully join the party. Pass the Kouchie.
For a collective that formed in the fires of Leeds in 1977 and sounded unlikely to last six weeks, let alone six months, hitting the 50-year mark with this level of creative vitality is a goddamned wonderful gift. Guided by the timeless belief that the political and personal remain inseparable, Horrorble proves that The Mekons' current slogan—"organize and resist"—is just as vital when spoken through the dark shadows. By tearing their own work apart, they have created an essential companion piece that replaces the fist-raised defiance of guitar rock with something much more haunting: reflection, space, and a profound, echoing warning. Question Everything.
Graded on a Curve:
Horror – 9/10
Horrorble – 9/10
The release date for Horrorble (The Mekons Vs. Tony Maimone In Dub Conference) is June 5, 2026.
The original studio album that it reworks, Horror, was released last year on June 16, 2025. Both are out via Fire Records.
