TheOGM and Eaddy are New Jersey duo Ho99o9. They make crashing, snot-nosed punk- rap: Death meets Death Grips in an industrial- sized tumble dryer, if you like. To date, they’ve charred our ears with four releases and the latest, October mixtape Dead Bodies In the Lake – which they claim is the “soundtrack to the mass amount of corpses (found & unfound) located in a large body of water surrounded by land” – is their best. As they prepared to churn up the moshpit in Belgium on their recent, hell- raising European tour, I chatted to them about Iggy Pop, dead bodies and being incomparable.
Wonderland.
THE SEASON OF HO99O9
he nasty and nihilistic duo shredding paint and making noise-rap.
Wonderland: So you’re called Ho99o9 and your new mixtape is called Dead Bodies in the Lake. Do you like scaring people?
Eaddy: [We’re] not really looking for a reaction, it’s just something we decided on – we couldn’t care less what people think about it. We could have named the project Rainbow Balloon and we would have been satisfied with it.
W: It’s safe to say your music is dark – there’re a lot of violent themes at play in it. Where does the aggression stem from, do you think?
TheOGM: From growing up, you know, just like growing up in dark times, hood shit, and not having much, you know? That kind of energy is instilled in us and even now we’re working hard, we’re not rich. It comes from struggle, you know?
W: The press are constantly comparing you to other noise-rap acts: Clipping, Hanz and the like. Does this frustrate you?
E: Don’t compare us with nobody.
T: Yeah, we don’t wanna be compared to anyone, or think we sound like anyone, we’re not trying to sound like anyone.
E: Nobody.
W: It’s a liberating position to take – trying to sound completely like you and not anyone else. T: To be honest, I wouldn’t say it’s hard but, in music, everything has been done. Everything has been overdone, so obviously any artist is trying to find that route for progression, for progressive art and that’s pretty much our goal to, like, evolve music and what we do.
E: A lot of bands sound the same and some bands get inspiration from certain people – the greats. The Cramps can sound like The Beatles and Iggy Pop took some stuff from Chuck
Berry, know what I mean? A lot of shit sounds the same. You could have a similar sound
or you could be the most unique [artist] and everybody’s still gonna be like, they sound like “this”.
W: 2016 is…
T: We got a lot more dead bodies on the way! A lot. A LOT.
Photographer
Brad Elterman
Words
Gemma Styles