TERROR – pain into power (CD)

For two decades Terror have been relentless. The band has achieved a kind of longevity that's exceedingly rare, managing to stay both consistently active and consistently ferocious-a feet that's taken them from their underground roots to being one of the most legendary groups in hardcore. Now on their eighth studio album, Pain Into Power, the band have bridged the gap between their past and present, with original guitarist Todd Jones returning to the fold to produce an extraordinarily visceral record that proves Terror's future is looking as fast, heavy, and aggressive as ever. Terror-whose current lineup is made up of vocalist Scott Vogel, drummer Nick Jett, guitarists Martin Stewart and Jordan Posner, and bassist Chris Linkovich-were founded in 2002 by Vogel, Jett, and Jones, with the latter leaving the band a few years later and eventually forming the brutal hardcore-by-way-of-death-metal outfit, Nails. When the world was put on hold at the start of 2020, Vogel reached out to Jones about the idea of working on a project. They began writing songs together again and quickly found their old creative chemistry was more than intact. Terror and Jones marked the moment with 2021's Trapped In A World, a live-in-the-studio rerecording of songs from the band's earliest releases, and the experience was so satisfying that the team soon turned their attention to making a brand new Terror album. With Jones at the production helm and Matt Hyde engineering/mixing (whose previous work includes Terror's landmark album Keepers of The Faith, as well as releases from The Deftones, Slayer, Hatebreed, and more), the band convened at Jett's Jet To Mars Studio with the goal of making an album that captures the unhinged kinetic energy of Terror's earlier work filtered through 20 years of seasoned musicianship. "Todd's whole approach to, and vision for, this record was to make it just full-on aggression from the minute it starts to the minute it ends," Vogel explains. "That goes back to our first EP, Lowest Of The Low, which Todd was writing on. This album is maybe even more turned-up, even faster, even more abrasive. Terror post-Todd has stayed the course along that aggressive, hard-hitting, fast, in-your-face hardcore that doesn't stray from the path too much-but he really wanted this one to be straight insanity that doesn't let up." *End Hits