Kent's Ohhms are riding high on the release of their debut album, 'The Fool'. The five piece defy easy categorisation with their blend of sludge, doom, prog, noise and more, revolving around the central theme of the prophecy of the Tarot deck. We caught up with vocalist Paul Waller and bassist Chainy Rabbit at Holy Roar Records' recent 420 celebration, and while the chat was supposed to focus on the new record, the subjects raised took us genuinely by surprise - as any tarot reading should.

There seems to be some division over whether ‘The Fool’ is truly the bands debut album, or if their previous work should be considered as full length releases in their own right. Paul doesn’t sit on the fence: “We do have rows about this because I’m the only one in the band who calls the other two releases ‘EP’s’. Because they’re linked they all think they’re albums” but Chainy jumps to disagree, tongue in cheek. “They’re technically albums. It depends if you want to do things factually or make them up as you go along.”

But why did it take the band (who formed in 2014) so long to release an album proper? “The reason why we waited so long was because it didn’t seem right to just jump straight into an album. It wouldn’t seem right for any band to do it. You’ve got to test the waters first,” explains Paul. “Our initial EP was originally just to get gigs and maybe get us on a label. As soon as we started recording it I got really inspired. As soon as Max [Newton] did his drum tracks, I realised that this was more than an EP, this is something special. We need to get this out there. At that moment we took it seriously.”

‘The Fool’ uses the overarching theme of the Tarot to tackle some hefty contemporary themes – something that Ohhms aren’t unfamiliar with. “I strayed a little bit from the GMO and animal rights angles that were on the first two EPs.  Not that it doesn’t hold my interest, because it does, I’m really passionate about that. But with the Tarot subject, as soon as ‘The Magician’ was done, everything else flowed,” Paul explains. “There were more observational songs. A friend of mine got really heavily into conspiracy theories, and that became ‘The World’, and it took over his whole life. I couldn’t not write about that, so I asked his permission, and he just wants to spread the word that everything’s a conspiracy; the earth is flat, man never landed on the moon. Another observational song was ‘The Hanged Man’, and that’s when I knew everything would work. I walked past a newspaper at work, The Daily Mail, and there was a headline that was horrific. And I thought ‘How is that legal?’ I couldn’t believe you could spread racial hatred and panic and fear on the front of a newspaper. I couldn’t believe it. So I went online and I looked at more headlines that the daily mail had done and it just inspired a whole song.”

Chainy continues: “Whereas before it was more vegetarian and vegan, more global themes, it is still a moral thing with all our songs. If you think ‘The Lovers’ is a love song, it’s not: it’s an in depth look at arranged marriages. All our songs are very conscious of things that are happening today or that have happened before.”

A solid concept album, ‘The Fool’ has an undeniable thematic flow. Was this always the intention? Where did it come from? “On our very first tour with Bodyhound and Employed To Serve I was talking to Justine [Jones, ETS] that it would be cool if we did Tarot cards along with the album, and this was about three years ago. So you’d get three cards randomly as your past, present and future and it just went from there,” Paul recalls. “As soon as I started reading up on Tarot I knew what a great album that would be. It was always the plan from the beginning to do that. There was no doubt that was the way I wanted to go. The band is pretty much a democracy, and as soon as I mentioned it to everyone else they were all on board. Sometimes someone’s not too keen, so you put it on the back burner and go to something else, but everyone was up for this.”

“I remember Paul saying ‘If we ever do an album I think we should do a concept album’. It really appealed to me, and to Marc, and even before we had the Tarot theme we knew if we did an album it would be a concept album because that’s what we’re interested in,” Chainy confirms.

While it’s always a safe bet to play within convenient genre confines, Ohhms seem keen to forge their own path, even within a scene as diverse as the UK metal underground. “We all come from different musical backgrounds, but also we’ve got a lot of crossover. I’m sure that some of the stuff I listen to would be embarrassing for Chainy. Some of the stuff Chainy listens to is embarrassing for me. But when I watch him play the bass, it inspires me. And I hope when hears something I’ve done he gets inspired himself.”

Chainy admits that “The only reason I dance the way I do is because of you … Everyone always says I look like an idiot dancing everywhere. I used to throw myself around like a hardcore musician, and then Paul started doing this in-depth The Doors kinda thing, and it absorbed into the way I moved. All of us listen to different music, we’re all pulling in different directions and that’s how we accidentally or intentionally sound original. All of us have a different idea of what a song should sound like, and then you have five opinions in one song.”

Paul has a very apt summary of his, and indeed any, band’s approach to writing together despite the agony of independent influence: “I look at it this way; if we’re all standing in a circle, we’ve all got one foot in the middle of the circle but we’re all exploring with the other foot. As long as that one foot stays central the band’s a unit, we’ve got that core.”

Ohhms see their work in the studio and their work onstage as very separate endeavors. “When we’re in the studio we want to do the best we can do with what we’ve got. We ignore what we can do on stage and later we try and incorporate it. Max wrote loads of noise parts to join songs together that we can’t do live at the moment,” illustrates Chainy.

Paul continues: “With this album I think it’s only ‘The Lovers’ that we can’t do live. Not because we physically couldn’t, I just wouldn’t want to do it unless I had a great female vocalist with me. But everything else can be done live, and that’s what we’ll be doing with the Bossk tour.”

The artwork for ‘The Fool’ extends far beyond the cover. A tarot set was created to accompany the record, with three random cards being included with every copy. It was a consideration from the beginning. “I got in touch with our artist, a guy called Nicola. He lives in Italy, he is Black Sails design. I said ‘we can’t afford to do this in one go, but each month can we hire you to do one Tarot card and then send it over?’ It took 22 months, and it turned out so good”, Paul explains.

Drawing all this inspiration from the tarot deck, surely the band have deigned to have their fortunes read? Paul and Chainy both admit to it. “Yeah for a publicity thing. It was a really odd thing back in November. So they do a general spread, and then a monthly one,” Paul elaborates. “When it hit November, Chainy and I had the exact same cards lined up, saying there was going to be a big upheaval in November. Something is going to happen, and you have to handle it correctly, or things are going to go shit shaped.”

Chainy seems a tad more positive. “Mine was that there was going to be a massive argument in November, but by January I am the winner of the argument.” Do the band identify personally with any one Tarot card? Paul seems to. “The card I identify with most is The Fool. I’ve taken that journey, and that’s what the whole point was – he takes a journey through the tarot. I think he ends at ‘The World’, and obviously we stuck that in the middle. We couldn’t do ‘The Heirophant’, 22 minutes worth of song, and then stick ‘The World’ on the end.”

Whilst the band seem more than happy with the album’s release and how it has been received, it’s been far from smooth sailing. An ill fated trip out to Stockholm, Sweden saw the band put in a position they had never expected to be in. “We got flown over to Stockholm to play a metal festival, and that experience being an underground band with a festival wanting you and paying for our flights and everything, all we had to do was turn up. So we got there on time, we had this crazy driver who almost killed us on the way there, but that was all right because we got there. Then we went for a meal because we got there a little bit early,” Paul remembers. They went to a nearby shopping center, but after coming back, the atmosphere changed.

“The entire venue was this glass building, and they started shutting the curtains, and acting as if we were closed. We had no idea what was going on,” says Chainy. “So it was a ‘terrorist incident’, inverted commas because who knows, but a guy ran a truck into some people. The gig got cancelled, everything in Stockholm got shut down” Paul elaborates. “We were upstairs in this little room and of course with what happened in Paris you don’t know what’s going to happen. So we were checking for exits, we’re all really nervous, just eating crisps. The weird thing about it was, although there was no gig and we had to spend ten hours at an airport and then go home, it bought us together.”

Chainy recalls just how affecting the experience was for them. “I remember I looked out the window and there were 50 people stood outside of the venue looking at the shopping mall, just stood there devastated. It was so depressing, and so scary as well. It was the most surreal situation. People live that every day.” Paul agrees: “Even though we’ve processed it, and we really want to get back out there because we didn’t get to play, it’s something that I’ll never forget.”

After such a surreal and moving experience, the band are more than happy to be back at home and playing the Holy Roar 420 show with such excellent company. Chainy especially has high praise (no pun intended) for long-term friends and scene mates, Slabdragger: “I feel younger. Even though I am young, I feel even younger watching them. We’re very close friends, we know them personally. It was good to see them dressed up, amazing to play with them again. I remember the first time we toured with them, I came back and told everyone I knew that I’d only ever tour if Slabdragger were the band we were touring with. They’re amazing guys. I am disappointed that Slabdragger aren’t as big as Slipknot – no offence to them, because they are better than Slipknot, but everyone needs to own a Slabdragger album or needs to see them live.”

2017 has already been a monumental year for Ohhms. If you’re wondering what else the quintet have got in the pipeline, Paul is more than happy to fill you in. “There are a few festivals in the UK. A tour in Europe, and in August we might do a few more dates in the UK. What I’m really interested in, and Chainy doesn’t know this yet, is that I want to get our heads together writing new songs. I want to be able to put a new EP out early next year, hopefully by the end of next year have another album out, I just want to go full on and do as much as possible. I’m old, I’ve not got long. I’m gonna die.”

Chainy, laughing is teasingly unsympathetic, but agrees wholeheartedly. “It’s true, he is very old. Our number one priority is writing. We don’t care if there’s an audience. We’re very thankful there is an audience, but for us, when we started the band, all of us had been in bands for over ten years. Our attitude was; we don’t care if anyone likes us, we’ve got something inside us that we need to communicate. We need an outlet, and that’s what this band is for us. We need to express. If we could, we would play a gig every single day. If we could, we would write a song every single day. Ohmms for me is oxygen. It’s something that has to be there.”

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‘The Fool’ is available from Ohhms’ bandcamp page and via Holy Roar Records.  You can keep track of all their upcoming shows on their Facebook page.