Billy Nomates – Metalhorse

Label: Invada Records
Released: 16th May 2025

Life’s a funfair, but not the shiny kind with candy floss and prize-winning teddy bears. It’s more like that abandoned park on the edge of town where the rusty Ferris wheel creaks in the wind and forgotten dreams collect like ticket stubs. That’s the world Billy Nomates builds on ‘Metalhorse’, her third album that trades raw punk edges for something more cinematically ambitious.

Recording for the first time in a proper studio (Paco Loco in Seville) with a full band, Tor Maries has crafted her most expansive work yet. The bare-bones DIY approach of previous releases gives way to rich arrangements that feel like David Lynch scoring a Western. ‘The Test’ struts with 80s swagger, while ‘Override’ takes an unexpected detour down country roads, proving Maries isn’t afraid to swap safety pins for spurs when the mood strikes.

But don’t mistake the broader palette for softening edges. ‘Life’s Unfair’ hits like a heavyweight’s gut punch wrapped in velvet, while ‘Plans’ bursts through the melancholy with the wide-eyed rush of escape plans hatched in midnight diners. The production, helmed by James Trevascus, knows when to let the spaces breathe and when to fill them with swirling Leslie speakers and ghostly fairground echoes.

There’s a special kind of magic happening when Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers shows up on ‘Dark Horse Friend’. It’s one of many moments where personal history (Maries’ late father was a devoted Stranglers fan) transforms into creative gold.

The album’s conceptual framework – that crumbling funfair metaphor – provides a perfect backdrop for exploring life’s precarious thrills and inevitable losses. When Maries declares “Death is a strange gift” on the track of the same name, it lands with the weight of hard-won wisdom.

‘Metalhorse’ closes with ‘Moon Explodes’, a defiant final act where even divine intervention can’t derail our protagonist. It’s a fitting end to an album that finds hope in the ruins and beauty in broken things. 

This isn’t the fairground soundtrack of your childhood memories – it’s what plays in your head when you revisit those places years later and realise nothing gold can stay. But as Billy Nomates proves, sometimes the rust tells the better story.