In 10 years of making music, Scottish synth-pop trio Chvrches has always taken its time. The band struck gold with 2013’s The Bones of What You Believe, but rather than re-create hit “The Mother We Share,” Chvrches went on to create three diverse albums, including August’s Screen Violence.

That record explores themes of gaslighting, harassment, resilience and escapism in the digital age, loosely through the lens of 1980s horror tropes. The album is as mesmerizing as it is cinematic, easily one of Chvrches’ best creations to date. Ahead of the band’s December 11 Brooklyn Bowl show, multi-instrumentalist Iain Cook spoke to the Weekly about spooky films, guest star John Carpenter and more.

You started writing Screen Violence in February 2020. Why was horror on your minds during that time? Horror is always on our minds (laughs). We’re big horror fans. It was actually [vocalist] Lauren [Mayberry’s] idea. We had the name Screen Violence lying around for 10 years when we were coming up with the [band’s] name. We would obviously eventually settle for Chvrches, but Screen Violence was a name that was in the running for it. She came across the document with all of the names we didn’t use, and for some reason, Screen Violence just jumped right out. I think it had a lot to do with, in a more modern context, the violence that goes on online, with social media, death threats, and all kinds of horrible things that happened. That was one of the elements that drew her to the name.

It’s the first time we’ve ever started with a name for an album before there were ever really any songs. It’s not a concept album, per se, because the songs loosely fit in with the imagery, and it’s not a story from start to finish ... [but the name] just stuck and acted as a framing device for the songs. I think it helped focus us creatively when it came to the lyrics and the music. But [bandmate] Martin [Doherty] and I, when we’re writing music, producing the music, we always have little nods to horror films in there anyway.

When I saw the title, my mind immediately went to the David Cronenburg film Videodrome. If you had to pick three films that loosely informed this album, what would they be? Videodrome definitely. That’s something that’s going to come up quite a lot with this band. The song “Lies” on our first album, the lyrics were loosely inspired by the film Videodrome. We got to meet Debbie Harry in New York, and she said that she loved that song. I was so starstruck, I didn’t have the balls to say, By the way, that lyric is sort of about the film you were in (laughs). So that was kind of awesome. I’m glad that she liked it.

I would say for top three, definitely Videodrome, Nightmare on Elm Street for sure, and Halloween probably, John Carpenter’s Halloween. Those are the three that stuck out first.

Songs like “Final Girl” have a real slasher vibe to them and shine a light on the female survivor perspective. Why was that important to explore?Lauren is the one who writes the lyrics, and we believe that good lyrics come from a personal place and a personal perspective. … 2018 was a really tough year for Lauren, and she experienced a lot of flack online. ... I think the whole experience of being a woman in the spotlight can draw a lot of misogyny and hatred and bitterness and jealousy. A lot of it comes from very real things that she’d experienced.

Chvrches Twitter references other horror classics that tie into the screen violence theme. Some fans are now watching these films for the first time because of the album. How does it feel to have that impact? That’s great. It’s one of the nice byproducts of being able to be in a band and have people that follow you and listen to your music. ... It’s a really important role to have. When I was growing up, for me, it was my older cousin who introduced me to all the music that I loved, and made me want to be a professional musician and also all the movies. We still talk about movies and watch them together all the time.

It’s a really good thing to be able to give to people, because there’s so many movies, there’s so much content, now more than ever. It’s good to have people who you respect, who can drop you a little trail of breadcrumbs (laughs) that hopefully lead to something that might change your life. ... Somebody might want to make a movie after seeing something that really impacts them like that, so it’s good. It feels positive.

You’ve created songs for video games, specifically Death Stranding and Mirror’s Edge. Is composing for horror next? Yeah, absolutely, that would be fun. Nobody’s asked us yet to do a horror movie score, but maybe after the whole Screen Violence thing it will be on people’s radar.

I hope John Carpenter’s your first call. If John Carpenter asked us to score his film, it would be an instant yes. We actually got to remix one of his songs, and he remixed one of ours on this one, which was a real nice surprise. I never thought in a million years that we’d be able to work with John Carpenter, but that was a really fun project.

How did you link up? Naturally, we just asked him (laughs). We were brainstorming cool ideas around who can we get to remix the songs that may tie into this world that we were trying to create with Screen Violence. [We were like], we should ask somebody like John Carpenter. We asked the actual John Carpenter, and he said yeah, so we sent him the album, and he picked “Good Girls.” He really liked that song. It’s amazing, he actually plays a guitar solo on our track. It blew our minds when we first heard it. Actually, Martin said to me, “Oh no, this is better than our version,” (laughs). So that was a great honor, one of the great honors of my life.

You have another feature with The Cure’s Robert Smith on “How Not to Drown.” That’s also pretty legendary. We’re so lucky, when you start looking back at these things. Like, how the hell did that happen? (laughs). Our manager, Campbell [McNeil], had been trying to get in touch with The Cure’s management with [the idea of] maybe doing some shows with them because there were some rumors that there’s a new Cure album coming out, so they’ll be touring next year and all that. …

It turns out The Cure doesn’t actually have management. It’s Robert himself. So he emailed our manager and said, “Hey, what’s up, what do you want?” (laughs) Campbell came straight back and was like, “Hey, what do we want from Robert Smith?” And we were like, uh, I don’t know! So we again had the balls to be like, here’s a bunch of songs. Do you want to do anything with them? And he said yes. So maybe the moral of the story is, don’t be afraid to ask.

Chvrches With Donna Missal, December 11, 7:30 p.m., $31-$51. Brooklyn Bowl, brooklynbowl.com.

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