#20: Diagonal – Tomorrow – My wife doesn’t really like shoegaze music. She just doesn’t get it. This record, however, made her say she might grow to like shoegaze. I can’t write a better recap than that.
#19: Blackwater Holylight (self-titled) – This debut from these dark psych rockers has sexy goth touches, doom riffs, and psychedelic flair that made it high on my list this year.
#18: Neko Case – Hell-On – Case’s latest is another beautiful record of masterful songwriting, sometimes heartbreaking lyrics, and plenty of folk, Americana, and outlaw touches.
#17: Shopping – The Official Body – This post-punk fun-fest is poppy, peppy, and punky. It’s fun from beginning to end.
#16: Terminal Mind – Recordings – Speaking of punk, this reissue of rare material from Austin, Texas punk legends Terminal Mind was a great time capsule from the Regan administration and full of anger, chugging riffs, and trashing of authority figures.
Austin, Texas punk / no wave legends Terminal Mind only blazed through the Austin scene for three years (1978 – 1981), but they are back with a powerful release of rare cuts from their short time together. Recordings collects a rare four-song 7″, live cuts, and unreleased studio tracks. It’s a solid collection and already in the running for best reissue of 2018.
Opening with the skronky, bold “I Want to Die Young,” the band’s powerhook guitars are put front and center right away. “I see life as a TV at midnight, nothing but static and outdated reruns,” Steve Marsh sings as he dreams of becoming something better than he is now before he gets old and waits for a heart attack.
“Refugee” has Marsh continuing his themes of alienation as he sings, “In a war, there are winners and losers. I’m in-between.” The post-punk attitude of “Sense of Rhythm” is sharp as a hatchet (and so is the drumming). “Zombieland” sounds like an early Devo cut as Marsh sings about the joys of “living in negative space” and ignoring the suffering and injustice around you. The guitars on it devolve into a wild cacophony that almost sounds like air raid sirens by the end.
“Obsessed with Crime” has a raw energy not unlike something you’d hear from the Stooges. Terminal Mind once opened for them, so the influence shouldn’t surprise anyone. The guitars and bass on “Fear in the Future” are downright dangerous. Marsh growls “Time is a trigger, I hold it in my hand. I point it at the future. I think you understand.”
The live tracks begin with the snappy “Radioactive,” in which Marsh sings about hoping to have super powers so he can survive a nuclear war and watch everything burn around him. The equally speedy “Bridges Are for Burning” follows it.
“No one wants to know the meaning of life anymore,” Marsh sings on the angry “(I Give Up on) Human Rights.” “Black” is like Joy Division if they decided to speed up the beats and crank up the distortion. You can almost feeling the audience grooving during “Missing Pieces.” The keyboards on “Bureaucracy” slather the song in a glorious, distorted noise that ends the album on a high, post-punk note.
Three years was too short for a band this good, but at least we have this reissue to remember Terminal Mind. Let’s hope for some new material in the future. I’d love to hear their take on modern times.
Keep your mind open.
[I don’t want you to die young. I just want you to subscribe.]
“Grayscale art-rock with punk desperation channeled through instrumental and songwriting legitimacy…Terminal Mind remains an act locals still celebrate despite a short lifespan and being under-recorded.” — Austin Chronicle
First-wave Austin, TX punk trio Terminal Mind premiere the first track from their forthcoming retrospective album today via Austin Chronicle. Recordings collects the short lived band’s 4-song 7″ (which fetches upwards of $100 on eBay), Live At Raul‘s compilation cuts and outstanding unreleased studio and live recordings. Hear and share “Refugee” HERE. (Direct Soundcloud.)
Terminal Mind, formed in 1978, was one of the early first-wave punk acts in Austin, TX. Based far from the urban roots of a genre in its earliest stages, the band absorbed influences as disparate as Pere Ubu, Roxy Music, John Cale, and Wire. The life span was short, but their influence touched many of the next generation of Texas noise and hardcore acts as they shared bills with fellow proto-punks The Huns and Standing Waves at Raul’s, The Big Boys on the UT campus, and even opened for Iggy Pop at the Armadillo World Headquarters.
Founding members Steve Marsh and the Murray Brothers, Doug and Greg, started as a trio before adding synthesizer player Jack Crow. Steve Marsh moved to New York with his experimental noise band Miracle Room (before eventually returning to Austin and forming space/psychedelic rock band Evil Triplet and beginning an experimental solo project dubbed Radarcave), while Doug Murary joined the Skunks and Greg Murray played in a later version of The Big Boys. Jack Crow passed away in 1994.
This collection of songs is a journey back to the ‘anything goes’ first steps of American punk as it left the dirty streets of New York and Los Angeles and made its way into the heartland. Like the Austin of 1978, Recordings is a small outpost of musical individualism that planted seeds for the alternative music explosion familiar to later generations.
Recordings will be available on LP, CD and download on January 19th, 2018 via Sonic Surgery Records.
