RHYTHM AMONGST THE CHAOS: TERROR ARE UNITERS, NOT DIVIDERS
C’mon – you gotta love a band like Terror. They’re uniters, not dividers – the kind of band that prove that the line between Slayer and DRI really isn’t that far apart. Yeah yeah yeah, from a purely aesthetic stand point, everything about them is hardcore – but I defy any thrash fan to tell me that he or she really, really hates this band. As Throwdown’s Dave Peters put it, “how the fuck can someone tell me… they love Hatebreed but hate Slayer? Sure the lyrical content and haircuts are different, but we’re not talking Whitney Houston and Skrewdriver for fuck’s sake.”
And so while some songs on Rhythm Amongst the Chaos – the EP Terror will release on October 30 as a one-off collaboration with Reaper Records and stop-gap between last year’s Always the Hard Way and the band’s next full-length – are distinctly hardcore (the title track, the cover of Breakdown’s “Kickback”), it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who has ever rode the lightning isn’t gonna love the fast, visceral viciousness of “Dissected,” “Vengeance Calls on You,” or “Arms of Truth.” Doug Weber and Martin Stewart’s razor sharp guitars and the pummeling rhythm section of bassist Jonathan Buske and drummer Nick Jett provide the so-fast-they’re-head-spinning riffs and jaw-shattering breakdowns, while vocalist Scott Vogel sounds like his brain might explode from all the raw rage caught in his craw. These aren’t five dudes in a band; they’re five fingers clenched into a fist, ready for violence. The roaring lion on the cover is perhaps the greatest example of honesty in advertising the music world has ever known. In fact, if I have any complaints about this disc, it’s that since only one song runs over the two minute mark, it’s over much, much too fast.
Right now, there’s some kid out there who hasn’t been able to stop listening to Among the Living since he illegally downloaded it; he’s gonna hear this album and seek out some Bad Brains to illegally download pronto. Likewise, across town there’s a skin head who can’t stop listening to his older brother’s copy of Petitioning the Empty Sky, who’s gonna hear this album and ask his brother if he owns Reign in Blood. And for those of us who want our aggression raw and real and don’t give a fuck what subgenre it comes from, that’s a beautiful thing.
(four out of five horns)
-AR
