Culture
Mekons founding member Tom Greenhalgh on ‘HORROR’, ‘HORRORble’, and playing Cleveland June 3
By: Emily Votaw
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CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOUB) – A band of creatively audacious art students at the University of Leeds launched mekons in 1977, pioneering a largely uncharted intersection of punk, folk, and country music, blurring the lines between high and low art, and committing from day one to an entirely collective approach that credits the band as a whole over any individual. While much in the realm of “consensus reality” has shifted in the decades since, the band’s stubborn indifference to the capricious movements of fashion has somehow remained relevant.
Maybe that’s why HORROR, the group’s most recent LP, arrived with such undiminished force upon its release last year. Taking aim at climate catastrophe, imperialism, and surveillance capitalism, the record did so, as founding band member Tom Greenhalgh will tell you, before the present moment had fully revealed how bad it would get.
Now Fire Records is giving HORROR an expanded re-release out June 12 alongside HORRORble, a full dub reimagining by Tony Maimone, bassist of Pere Ubu, the “avant-garage” architects who spent half a century making defiantly unclassifiable rock and earned Cleveland’s fierce, possessive pride in the process.
This summer, the band is taking that material back on the road for their mekons Over America tour notably stopping at the Music Box Supper Club (1148 Main Avenue) on June 3.
WOUB’s Emily Votaw put her questions to Greenhalgh in writing, asking about a world that has moved further into the nightmare HORROR predicted, the fresh interpretations of the album’s “blood and guts” Tony Maimone unearthed for HORRORble, and what the Leeds art students from 1977 might make of a band still standing nearly 50 years later. Find a transcript of their exchange below.
Tom Greenhalgh: Unquestionably further into the nightmare; Gaza, AI, He who shall not be named, ICE, Palantir, climate catastrophe, (illegal) wars everywhere… Add some of your own- the list is endless…
Greenhalgh: There were indeed many moments of genuine surprise especially as the songs are ripped inside out with blood and guts spilling everywhere.Tony did a fantastic job. He also recorded the mekons Existentialism album which I was listening to today. He is a man of great talent and extremely good looking too!
Votaw: The press materials for this tour trace the band’s evolving ethos from “the personal is political” to “the political is political” to “organize and resist.” What does that shift say about where mekons find themselves in 2026?
Greenhalgh: Interesting question! That’s one way of looking at the trajectory since “ye olden days of punke.” We now find ourselves in the same zone as everyone else – flooded with sh*t and weeks where decades happen and morbid symptoms are everywhere.
Votaw: You’re bringing this tour to Cleveland’s Music Box Supper Club on June 3 — a city with deep meaning given Tony Maimone’s roots with Pere Ubu. Does Cleveland feel like a particularly charged stop on this run?
Greenhalgh: Cleveland is always highly charged in my experience! As well as being an excellent place to find the highest quality vintage clothing too…
Votaw: As you approach the band’s 50th anniversary in 2027, is there anything about how mekons create music now that would surprise — or maybe horrify — the version of the band that first formed in Leeds in 1977?
Greenhalgh: I know for a fact that the band of 77 would be both surprised and horrified to have lasted one anniversary, nevermind 50! Because even more surprising and horrifying is the fact that the exact same version of the band that formed in Leeds in 1977 still exists. They’re called mekons 77 – some of us are in that version and this one… mekons 77 made an album not that long ago called It is Twice Blessed, check it out!