War from a Harlots Mouth

History

War from a Harlots Mouth got its start in 2005 as a side project with just three people: one guitarist, a drummer, and a vocalist. The band’s name was meant to describe someone who lies—the “war from the mouth” being the lie, and the “harlot” being the liar. They chose not to put an apostrophe in “harlots” simply because they thought it looked better that way.

Their first release, the EP Falling Upstairs, came out in June 2006 on cassette, with only 50 copies put out by the Berlin label Yehonala Tapes. The lineup for that EP had Simon Hawemann playing guitar and bass, Paule Seidel on drums, and Steffen Winopal handling vocals. Later that year, they did a split CD and 10-inch record with deathcore band Molotov Solution on Twelve Gauge Records. By the end of 2006, they had picked up a second guitarist and a bassist, and in 2007 they joined the War of Attrition Tour, which was promoting Dying Fetus’s album of the same name, alongside Skinless and Cattle Decapitation. They also played the Never Say Die! Fest with Ion Dissonance, Dead to Fall, and Through the Eyes of the Dead. That same year, they signed with Lifeforce Records and put out their album Transmetropolitan in September. Right after that, they toured Europe with The Ocean and Intronaut. Winopal left the band soon after those tours, and Nico Webers, who had been in The Ocean, took over on vocals.

On January 28, 2009, while they were part of the Thrash and Burn European Tour 2009, the band announced the release dates for In Shoals. That album was their first with Webers and marked a clear shift in sound, moving away from deathcore toward mathcore and metalcore, drawing comparisons to Converge and Gaza. They stuck with that style for the rest of their time together. Their third full-length, MMX, came out on October 29, 2010, and was streamed online before it hit stores and iTunes. On September 17, 2012, they dropped a lyrical video for the single “Scopophobia” off their final album Voyeur, which was released in Europe on October 19 and in the U.S. on November 6.