With Psychedelic Enigma coming out on October 24th via Steamhammer/SPV, THEM take their dark, cinematic sound to the next level – mixing power, prog, and horror in one wild ride. Guitarist Markus Ullrich shares what makes this album their most intense yet, working with legendary producer Randy Burns and pushing the band’s energy and storytelling further than ever before.
Hi Markus! Earlier records dragged us through haunted towns and blood-stained alleys. This time you throw “psychedelia” into the wound – where does that hallucinatory side cut deeper than the psychological horror of before?
I don’t know if it cuts deeper, but it definitely feels more internal. It’s a look back from different perspectives on what happened, with a weird twist at the end that makes it feel like almost anything could happen in the future. It’s probably less graphic, but it can hit you much harder.
You sit on the protagonist’s secret until the very last track. In an age where everyone wants instant payoff, why risk holding back? And once the mask drops – does mystery die, or grow sharper?
I guess we’ve always been open to risks. We just did what we wanted musically, so it doesn’t feel like a big step to do the same with the story. People are either into it or they’re not, and I’m pretty sure we don’t really have what you’d call a mainstream audience anyway. We don’t want to repeat ourselves, and I think our listeners kind of expect the unexpected from us. Oh, and I would say the mystery actually dies, but there’s this small uncomfortable remainder that you can’t be sure about.
Randy Burns stamped thrash into metal history. How did his raw fire collide with your more mind-warping experiments, and when you hear the final cut, does it scream old school reborn or something still coming down the line?
That’s a really good question. He mixed and mastered the album, but the songwriting, arrangements, and recordings were completely in our hands again. So, he didn’t influence the songs themselves. What we liked was the idea of letting a legend like him mix the material in his own way, the way he feels it. At the end of the day, we’re all kind of old school and grew up with his productions. We don’t want to sound like it’s still 1986, like some bands do, but we love those vibes because that’s where we come from. It’s really that combination that makes it work.
Psychonautic State sounds less like a “song” and more like a nervous breakdown on tape. What headspace, or maybe ritual, drives writing something that unhinged?
Hahaha, yeah, you totally nailed it! I’m pretty sure there are going to be some ‘what the fuck’ comments when people hear that song for the first time. We asked our label to pick which songs they’d prefer as singles, and we honestly couldn’t believe it when they chose PS for single number three. I love the idea, though. When I wrote the music, the plan was to come up with something in the vein of Watchtower, Realm, or Toxik. The funny thing is, once I started, I didn’t want to make it complex just for the sake of it. It just happened — call it naturally progressive.
Giannis Nakos gave you mirrored cover art with a twisted logo inside. Is that artwork meant as a doorway into the concept, or as another piece of misdirection to throw the listener off balance?
Funny enough, Troy came up with that idea during the process. The inlay was actually Giannis’s original suggestion for the cover. We liked the artwork, but the thing is, KK doesn’t really play the main role in the story, even though the cover gave that impression. Then Troy suddenly had the idea to use that exact design mirrored as the inlay and a variation of it as the actual cover. Sometimes a coincidence just steps in to help, and in the end, it feels like that’s exactly how we should have planned it from the start.
THEM always blurs storyteller and character. Is KK Fossor just the singer telling the tale, or has he fully become the untrustworthy figure haunting the whole saga?
KK Fossor is definitely the main protagonist of the first four albums, and nobody really knows who’s telling the story. On this album, though, that changes. Everything takes place in someone’s memory. Whose memory it is gets revealed at the end. But when it comes to interpreting the actual ‘showdown,’ there are two possible ways to see it.
Horror films like The Others use silence like a knife. Did you carve out spaces of restraint on this album deliberately, or did they creep in naturally while writing?
A lot about this album was coincidence. It would probably sound better if I said everything was planned out exactly that way, but that would be a lie. What actually was planned, though, is the order of the songs, which is really important and also quite unusual. Normally, after two fast songs you’d throw in something slower and spread the more epic moments across the record. But this album is more divided into three moods: the heavy start, the more experimental and progressive pieces in the middle, and the epic tracks at the end. I also don’t think there’s a single song that really represents the whole album, it’s just way too diverse. Another thing that was important to me was leaving out the dialogues, apart from the intro and outro. That makes the album feel more direct and powerful, and it gets rid of that comic-book effect.
Back when Sweet Hollow came out, did you already see a five-part beast forming, or has this saga just kept mutating like something you couldn’t kill even if you tried?
When we wrote Sweet Hollow, it was really just Troy and me. At least I assumed it was going to be a one-off project. But then suddenly the whole thing was recorded, we got an offer to go on tour, and just like that we were a band. From then on it was clear we’d keep going, though I never would have thought that by 2025 we’d already be on our fifth album. But we just get along really well and stay creative, so somehow things just keep happening.
The Electric Church / Echoes / Troubled Minds sequence feels like a ritual more than a tracklist. If that three-part epic really was a séance, what would you be summoning?
That trio still blows me away myself. I’d say if it were just about summoning something as profane as Mr. Satan, the first song alone would be enough. That’s why I’d see those three songs together more as the foundation for their own cult — and of course the cult’s name would have to be determined by H.P. Lovecraft. Strictly speaking, he’s the one we’d have to summon.
Five albums in, you’ve built your own mythology. Is that a conscious cult you’re feeding, or just the only way you know how to write?
It’s a certain mindset, and the good thing about it is that we can do whatever we want since we’re not tied to a specific style. You’ll find elements of Hard Rock, Thrash Metal, Black Metal, and Doom Metal in our world. Even if that were the only way we knew how to write, there really aren’t many bands out there who could do the same. Oh, shit, that sounds extremely arrogant and almost narcissistic.
So let me put it this way – and I can only speak for myself here: there’s always music in my head, and I listen to a lot of different styles. It’s easy for me to adapt to a certain style as long as I’m listening to it. There probably won’t be a country album, though.
When Psychedelic Enigma finally tears the mask off, is that the end of the road – or is the real curse that the nightmare always mutates into another form?
It’s definitely more than just the end of a chapter. It’s the end of a cycle. That could mean it’s the definitive ‘end end,’ or it could be the beginning of something completely new — and most likely ferocious.
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