SALEM

 

JACK DONOGHUE

photographed by TERRY RICHARDSON
interview and band pictures by RACHEL CHANDLER
styled by MEL OTTENBERG

Andy Salmen, stylist’s assistant

 

SALEM, the gothic-styled electro-rock trio from Michigan made up of John Holland, Heather Marlatt, and Jack Donoghue created a sensation even before they released their first album, King Night. SALEM’s self-made, self-styled visual and sound aesthetic amalgamates ethereal industrial sounds and moody processional music with images from old horror movies and the eerie lost in the woods ambiance of Blair Witch Project. Thesounds of church organs and heavy machinery are enjoined with foreboding projections of an otherworld that writers like H.G. Wells or Cormac McCarthy might have imagined. They project a phantasmic apocalypse looking for new gods.

RACHEL CHANDLER — You all grew up in the Midwest. How old are you?
JOHN HOLLAND — Jack is 22. Heather and I are 25. Heather and I grew up…