More about: ho99o9

In this age of chaos and uncertainty, the return of Ho99or is a necessity. The duo’s new album SKIN is an incendiary listening experience that builds on what the band have already created—and elevates it to a new sonic plateau. Approaching the record in a different way to their debut United States of Ho99o9, SKIN perfectly captures the chaotic nature of the world we now live in.

The second album from Ho99o9 duo theOGM and Yeti Bones, SKIN is produced by a familiar but unexpected name. “The whole album is produced by Travis Barker and it’s our first record in which we use one producer on the whole record”, theOGM tells us. “I think, going into this, we were overthinking that people were gonna be like, ‘oh my God, Travis Barker. He's used to making pop punk and Ho99o9 have probably gone soft!’ But it’s still energy. It’s us and it’s Ho99o9!”

On the experience of working with Travis on the album and how they hooked up, theOGM starts: “To be honest with you, there were highs and lows, but in all, he's a professional and he's always been good to us. He’d been a long-time fan of the band, and had reached out wanting to work through a mutual friend. At the time, we weren't really trying to work with people outside of our camp, but then another friend of mine suggested it, so we ended up linking up with him. Every time we hung out, we made something new, something fresh and the vibe was always there. It's all love”.

Would you work with Travis again? “If there was a specific project and it was a sound we were looking for then yeah. We keep evolving so on the next project there will probably be some different people on it.” Who Ho99o9 would love to work with next—to keep their sound evolving—sounds incredible. “I would love to work with The Alchemist,” theOGM reveals. “Being in a band like this, people expect us to work with some producer that's going to bring, sonically, some shit that’s so menacing. But to be honest, I'm cool on heavy music. Our camp is solid, so when it comes to making heavy music…we’re never going to be short of that. But I want to work on songs that are more mellow and that can be balanced with the high energy stuff. I don't want to listen to an album of just hard music all the way through. There needs to be some sort of vibe in between and Alchemist would work well.”

With such a well-received debut album, the pressure to follow it up is understandable. But such a challenge keeps Ho99o9 on their toes. “There’s always pressure when you’re putting out music because you want to put out better material than the last. By the time the new record comes out, you’ve almost changed. We started working with Travis in 2019, and it’s now 2022. You work on it for the future, and finally it's here and you're almost working backwards now to meet up with this moment. The pressure is: are people going to fuck with it? Am I even going to still fuck with it? It’s tight though, and I’m excited to put it out. Pressure’s good: if it was too easy, it wouldn’t sound like it does”.

The visual aspect of Ho99o9 is very important and this is exemplified in the stunning video for the albums lead track ‘BATTERY NOT INCLUDED’. Yeti Bones tells us about the video, its themes and what inspired it. “We wanted it to be from us,” he says. “I hate going to other people and having other ears and eyes: it starts with us. I wrote the treatment: it was just a combination of a few things I was watching and listening to at the time and getting inspiration from, like the Nine Inch Nails ‘Closer’ video, the movie Holy Mountain, the movie Mandy with Nicolas Cage, this eerie cult vibe of symbolism. The key in the video is burning: that is the key to new beginnings, which is what the 999 is. It’s opening another door to the second chapter of Ho99o9, which is this album. We just made the video work to perfection and I'm glad it came from our minds instead of somebody else hopping on board”.

‘NUGE SNIGHT’, the immense opening track on SKIN, is a statement of intent and a nod to a certain hip-hop boss who struck fear into the music world and comes on as hard as his reputation and notoriety. Both theOGM and Yeti Bones are big fans of Death Row Records, and wanted the album’s opening salvo to come out blazing as hard as Suge Knight and Death Row did.

“Just his name alone puts fear in people's hearts,” laughs Yeti Bones, “especially in the 90s, if you grew up in the ‘90s and you knew about 2Pac, Dr Dre and Death Row, you knew they were serious business and they were really not to be fucked with. It was a serious game over there. Suge was an infamous man and he put fear in people's hearts. Nobody wanted to mess with Suge, he was the boss, he was dangerous”.

Ho99o9 definitely see a parallel between that Death Row vibe and their music. “When we play shows, our energy is like ‘oh yeah, them dudes are for real! They really go hardcore’. If you say something, it’s not a joke. That’s the energy. We’re not for playing: this is some serious business.”

As well as being fans of Death Row and the whole West Coast scene, Ho99o9 are well-versed in hip-hop from all different areas. Hailing from the East Coast (New Jersey to be precise), they are obviously lovers of Jersey and New York rap, but Houston and the South also give them plenty of inspiration. It comes as no surprise therefore that the duo were ecstatic to have Texan legend Bun B feature on SKIN track ‘SLO BREAD’. “That’s my favourite joint on the whole album just because I love rap music,” states theOGM. “I love rap music before I love rock music: that was my first love. To be in the presence of Bun B is amazing. I'm very honoured”. Yeti Bones agrees: “Rap and hip-hop and soul, you know, that's number one. That comes before all the punk and metal that we got into in our later teenage years. Rap is the number one source and it's just a blessing to be on a track with a rap legend. And it’s Bun B…it’s wild!”

Though rap, hip-hop and soul may come first, rock and punk still make up a sizable portion of Ho99o9’s DNA. It’s a strand represented by another SKIN guest: Slipknot’s Corey Taylor. theOGM and Yeti love the fact that different aspects of their fanbase will be exposed to things they won’t expect. “With Bun B, our homies are going to be like ‘whoa, what the fuck!’ Where we’re from in the hood, they might know Slipknot but they might not know Corey Taylor’s name but they do know Bun B. And vice versa…there might be some hardcore metalheads who see Corey Taylor and be: ‘oh shit that’s crazy!’ and then see Bun B and say ‘who’s that?!’” observes theOGM. “This is a good question right here,” Yeti Bones says: “What band do you know to have had a Corey Taylor song and a Bun B song on the same album? It’s not forced, it’s just genuine”.

SKIN is a vital album that is undeniably next level and sees Ho99o9’s creativity continue to grow. Having always been a group to keep to themselves and stay busy with their music, this duo have never rested on their laurels. In between the release of United States of Ho99o9 and SKIN, they’ve continued releasing, producing Cyber Warfare, mixtape Blurr and last year’s Ho99o9 presents Territory: Turf Talk, Vol. 1. It is this hustle that keeps Ho99o9 ahead of the game. They are as comfortable working with icons like Bun B and Corey Taylor as they are with more underground artists who are just as versatile, like Pink Siifu (“He’s the homie and if you check out his other work, oh shit! It’s insane!”) and Mike IX from Eyehategod (“I've been listening to Eyehategod for so long and he came in and blazed it, that shit is hard”) who feature on those mixtapes.

The mixtapes also give shine to their own camp, with artists like N8 Noface (“we’ve always been a fan of his work”) and Hoddy, the Young Jedi (“They’re our family so it was just natural for them to jump on board”). The chance to be able to shine a light on these artists is something Ho99o9 cherish. As theOGM tells us: “We make music and we work on so much shit all the time but your fans only get to hear it like every two, three, five years. To me, that's kind of a bummer. The type of artist I am, I literally work on music just about every day. I have so much music just laying around, it's insane. We have other artists that are from Jersey as well that are dope, our camp is dope and we want to continue to shed light on other folks. We want to keep putting people on and that's how our brand grows. The mixtapes were just a compilation of all the homies”.

With that sense of family in mind, it seems apt to talk about the positive nature of the music of Ho99o9, because despite the fact of its deeply incendiary, defiant and intense sound, the outlook the pair want their music to inspire is one that has an ultimately positive vibe. “It’s always been the same message, which is being unapologetic about who we are and what we do. We are two young Black men, and making the type of music that we're making—especially from where we are from, man, making it out of New Jersey and doing this shit—it was already a struggle. It was already tough just being who we are, and so SKIN is just [about] being confident in who you are and being ‘I’m gonna scream that shit in your face, I’m gonna blow smoke in your face, I’m gonna whisper that shit in your ear’. I’m unapologetic about who I am and what I stand for and that’s what it is”.

One listen to SKIN and you can hear an album that is taking the nature of the world today head on but still has positive things ahead. They echo that dichotomy now: “Destroy and rebuild. SKIN is the soundtrack to the apocalypse but it is the soundtrack to a brighter future.” With Ho99o9 leading the way, you can definitely count on that.

SKIN is out now.

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More about: ho99o9