Terror

My involvement with Terror was mostly in the early days of the band’s existance…  After things with Carry On ended abruptly, I think Todd did the only thing he knew how to do: channel all of that anger and intensity into new songs, and seek out the most fucking hardcore dude he could count on to live and breathe hardcore – that guy was Scott Vogel.  It didn’t take long, and Terror was born.  I’m pretty sure that my band, The Damage Done played Terror’s first show.  To top it off, we played last that night!  Holy shit was that intimidating and inappropriate – haha, Terror should have been headlining their own first show. But I mean, they couldn’t really do that.  That show was at Pat’s Warehouse in Ventura, CA with Piece By Piece, Terror, Hit The Deck, Diehard Youth, and The Damage Done.  I think Terror played 2nd.  They played in this tiny ass warehouse space, with dual full stacks on either side, with Scott Vogel hoods-up in a 100 Demons hoodie that had this gnarly ram’s head screen printed on the back of the actual hood, so you could only see it when the hood was up.  The whole scene was just super impressive, both musically and visually, and it was fast, heavy, intense, and fucking loud.  The rest is history, but man, that shit was a cool way to start a band.

Terror – “4 Song Demo” CDTerror hit the ground running, with professionally duplicated demo CDs at their very first show.  At this time, that was definitely not the norm.  So you knew these dudes meant business, haha.

Terror – “Don’t Need Your Help b/w Push It Away” 7″It wasn’t long before fellow Carry On crew dude and friend Scott Magrath started Takeover Records and was releasing all the “new post-Carry On band” stuff.  Scott is a graphic designer by trade.  He has also done the layouts for tons and tons of hardcore releases, especially ones involving me and my friends.  Anyway, he put out the Piece By Piece 7″ and the first official Terror release.  It was a two-song 7″ with “Don’t Need Your Help” and “Push It Away”.  It was a one-time pressing of 2,000 copies.

Here’s the back cover.  Since it was just a simple 2 song release, the cover was really just printed on one 7×7″ sheet, front and back – there was no fold-out cover, insert, or glued pocket.  The lyrics were printed on the back, shown above.  The labels were hand-stamped: one side Terror, other side Takeover Records.

Todd was always super insistent on making very few amounts of test pressings.  He hated how modern labels were making so many test pressings for each release.  There are only 6 copies of the first Terror 7″ test pressings – mine is #3/6.  I actually got mine from a European kid fairly recently, in 2007.   Our best guess is that my copy was probably originally Matt Smith’s, the first Terror bassist, but we’re not sure.

Here is a poster from Scott Magrath’s label, Old Guard Records. When he released the Piece By Piece and Terror 7″s, his label was originally called Takeover Records. But this pop punk band that was getting radio play at the time, Yellowcard, sent him a Cease And Desist letter because supposedly they had their own start-up label called Takeover. Wack! This poster features Scott’s dog, Mugger, and urges for animal adoption. As a fellow owner of a rescued pitbull for the last 8 years, I love this poster! Mugger’s World!

Terror – “Lowest Of The Low” LPLowest Of The Low is so fucking sick.  I still listen to it all the time, especially if I want to go for a quick run.  You can bust out a quick 2+ mile run with this record because it’s only like 18-20 minutes long.  It’s fast, it’s heavy, it’s hard, but it’s still absolutely straight up hardcore, without any metal bullshit.  I love this thing.  The pressing info is very simple – 1st pressing, 1,000 copies on yellow vinyl, that’s it.  It wasn’t until 2009 that this 2nd pressing on clear vinyl out of 1,000 copies surfaced.  When Bridge 9 was doing their “Warehouse edition” covers on a bunch of old left-over vinyl, they said something about “5 years later, we’ve come across a 2nd pressing of 1,000 on clear”, but I don’t think it’s entirely true that those have been sitting around in a warehouse… 1. B9 didn’t start pressing at Rainbo Records until very recently, and 2. the thing with Trustkill basically stealing the “Lowest Of The Low” release was really ugly and I don’t think B9 would have messed around with pressing while all that was going on.  My guess is that they probably had 1,000 extra jackets and inserts laying around and worked out a deal with the parties involved to press 1,000 more copies on vinyl.  Usually labels will do runs of at least 2,000 pieces of print at a time to save money per print, so that’s why I’m guessing they had print left over.  Who knows though, I didn’t ask.  The first pressing of this CD came in this cool metal tin, out of 1,000 copies.  I would need to dig out the CDs in my garage to find it.  I remember the first time the band got these special CD’s in their hands…  Terror was doing a short weekend of shows with In Control up the coast to Seattle, and Todd asked me if I wanted to come along – I said fuck yeah.  The first show was at 924 Gilman St. in Berkeley, CA.  I had moved to the Bay Area in 2002, so I was already living up here.  Myself and like 5-6 other friends were renting out this house that came to be known as “the Calaveras house”, and eventually turned into your typical punk house.  At some point, my friend Doug Weber and his girlfriend had moved in.  Doug eventually got to talking with Scott and Todd, and he ended up joining Terror as their 2nd guitarist (previously, Todd was handling it solo).  Shortly thereafter, Doug started spending most of his time in L.A., and wasn’t around the house much anymore.  So I just met up with Doug, Todd, Scott, and the guys at the first show at Gilman. I got to the show and started setting up merch right away.  They had just gotten these “tin” CDs in the mail from Bridge 9, and this was the first time they had them at a show.   It was also the first Terror material available on CD, other than their own self-released Demo.  The problem was, the CDs had just been finished, so only 100 were rushed overnight from the east coast to California (that shit is expensive).  Honestly, normally that really would be enough for just 3 shows.  But I put those things out on the table, and holy shit, it was like a maelstrom.  It felt like no matter what I did, I couldn’t work through that line of kids.  I sold through the first 100 CD’s in seriously like 20 minutes, but the line didn’t stop – they still kept coming, just wanting to buy shirts or demos or whatever they could get.  It seriously did not stop for the entire show, it was kind of bizarre.  Shit just wasn’t usually like that for any band, especially not for CD’s and t-shirts.  Yeah, kids went wild for vinyl sometimes, but it’s not like we had a limited record release vinyl or anything.  Terror was just huge, and it had happened overnight, off a fucking demo!  That Gilman show was fucking sick, kids went off.  We packed up and started the over-night drive to Seattle.  The only talk in the van for the first 30 minutes was seriously how wild and fun the show had been, and how bummed they were that they didn’t bring more stuff – we had zero CD’s and very little merch left for the other 2 shows.   The Seattle show went pretty good, and everyone had a good time.  I remember something funny and embarrassing happened to me after the show… I was opening up the back door of the van to start loading out, and the fucking key broke off in the door!  Hahaha, of course when the guys started filing outside with equipment I had to “explain myself”.  But shit, I hadn’t been doing anything weird, the fucking key just snapped in half when I put it in and turned! hahaha.  Luckily everyone was pretty cool about it, but I felt like a fool.  I could tell they were a bit annoyed because it made us stuck there at the venue for another 1-2 hours, but no one really said anything about it… We just called a lock smith and they came and were able to make another key.  No one asked me to pay for it or anything, so that was cool of them.  Hahaha, I felt like such a tool.

Like the first Terror 7″, I know this test pressing was kept to a very small amount. Bridge 9’s discography page confirms that there are only 4 copies of this 1st press test pressing made at United Record pressing.  There are 20 copies of the test pressing from Rainbo Records, used to make the 1,000 2nd press clear vinyl copies.

Promo poster for the release on Bridge Nine.

Reflections Records handled the European release of “Lowest Of The Low”, but it was a 10″, not a 12″.  There are 500 copies of each color scheme.

Terror – “Live And Death: Live At The Showcase Theatre” 7″While Bridge 9 was pressing the No Warning – “Ill Blood” LP, there had been a ton of problems (namely, the PB&J vinyl color fiasco), so people waited for months for their pre-orders while things got sorted out.  When the pre-orders finally came, there was an “apology note” included, plus a special bonus 7″ for free – the Terror “Live and Death” at the Showcase Theatre 7″!  This was the first of the beginning of the “Bridge Nine Bonus Series” of 7″s.  There were 500 of these Terror 7″s pressed, but only those 173 copies that came with No Warning pre-orders got a special “Sorry about the No Warning” stamp.  So the rest of the copies without the “sorry stamp” are out of 327.  One of each version is shown above.  It’s interesting that there were only 173 different people that pre-ordered the No Warning LP, despite it being a hugely anticipated record back then.  This just goes to show how much hardcore has grown in the last 10 years and our expectation of a “big record” these days is much, much bigger than that. But make no mistake, this was a big, big record back then!

Stamp on b-side of Terror 7″: “Sorry the No Warning LP took so long.  Here is a gift from the B9 Crew.”

Here’s the note apologizing for the delays and explaining the free Terror 7″!

Terror – “One With The Underdogs” LPTodd was still writing and recording songs for Terror on “One With The Underdogs”. I remember him sending me a photo of him hanging out with Freddy Madball during the recording session while Freddy was doing some guest vocals, haha.  But he had stopped traveling and touring with Terror a while before.  Touring just wasn’t for him at this point.  After this record, he didn’t write anything more for Terror.  The pressing info for this record was 150 on gold, 150 on white, 700 on green.  Either the gold or the white was only available directly from the band, I don’t remember which.

The test pressing in the upper right hand corner has Erika Records labels, more than likely out of 20 copies.  The B9 discography says the following: “The actual quantities of this are not known. The initial job was sent through Erika Records, but they took way too long so the job was terminated. The job was then sent through United Records. It is believed that Erika’s Test Pressing was 20 and United was 10, but we’re not certain of that.”

The back cover, plus insert.  I never knew what was up with the cover/artwork of this record… It’s kind of ugly, and I don’t totally get what the imagery has to do with being “one with the underdogs”.  The bondage/gag thing is creepy, haha.

Terror – “Always The Hard Way” LPI didn’t collect multiple versions of any Terror records after “One With The Underdogs”, but I still do check out their records whenever they release a new one.  This is the only copy of the later LP’s that I own.  I think Nick Jett took over most of the writing after Todd left, which is really impressive that a drummer is writing almost everything!  I would imagine that Doug did some writing for them along the way too, but I don’t really know.  This album came out on Lockin Out Records (Greg from Mental’s label), which is kind of surprising.  Typically all the Lockin Out stuff was either local Boston “friend bands” type stuff, or if it was outside of the New England area, it tended to be kinda goofy, bouncy, Underdog type bands.  My guess is that Martin started playing in Terror and was friends with Greg?  I don’t know anything about it, but I know when Martin was doing L.I.O.N. they always had that Mental/Lockin Out vibe.   Anyway, that’s cool that Lockin Out released it – I’m all for people doing things outside the box.  There was a European release too, on Reflections Records.

Here’s the inside of the gatefold and the separate insert.  The painting on the inside looks sick!

Back cover.

Terror – other 7″s…Here are several other Terror 7″s released over the years.  I stopped collecting multiple versions of new releases on vinyl a couple years ago, so I just have one copy of everything.  I actually used to have a bunch of colors of the top left, the “Dead Man’s Hand” split 7″ series on Deathwish, Inc. – this one is Terror / Ringworm.  This series had planned to have 4 different 7″s, each with a die-cut cover of a suit found on playing cards.  This one was obviously “clubs”.  The Hope Conspiracy / Suicide File was “spades”, Blacklisted / First Blood was “diamonds”, and “hearts” was supposed to be Converge / Hatebreed, but it has never materialized.  Maybe someday it will.  I’ve always thought this was such a cool fucking idea for a 7″ series, and they look super sweet.  The 7″ on the top right is a three-way split 7″ with Terror, The Promise, and Plan Of Attack.  I think it’s all live songs.  My copy on blue vinyl is #/100 on the dust sleeve. I think each band got 100 copies on a different color, numbered out of  100 to sell on tour.  The middle left is the original Terror Demo 7″ re-pressed on vinyl.  The middle right is the “Blood Tracks Demos” on grey/black swirl vinyl.  The bottom is the “Rhythm Amongst The Chaos” EP on gold/black splatter.

Here’s some other colors of the Terror / Ringworm split 7″. This one is clear vinyl.

Orange vinyl

White vinyl

My Terror collection, at its peak:

• Terror – 4 Song Demo CD
• Terror – Don’t Need Your Help b/w Push It Away (TEST PRESS, #3/6)
• Terror – Don’t Need Your Help b/w Push It Away (CLEAR, out of 2000)
• Terror – Live And Death (BLACK, B9 Bonus 7″ #1, w/o the No Warning message on b-side, out of 173)
• Terror – Live And Death (BLACK, B9 Bonus 7″ #1, w/”No Warning thank you message” on b-side, out of 327)
• Terror – Life and Death the demo (GOLD, out of 158)
• Terror – Rhythm Amongst The Chaos (GOLD w/BLACK splatter, out of 700)
• Terror – Blood Tracks Demos (GREY/BLACK SWIRL, out of 800)
• Terror / Ringworm – Split (ORANGE, out of 500)
• Terror / Ringworm – Split (RED, out of 500)
• Terror / Ringworm – Split (CLEAR, out of 1500)
• Terror / Ringworm – Split (WHITE, out of 1500)
• Terror / The Promise / Plan Of Attack – Split (BLUE, out of 100)
• Terror – Lowest Of The Low (TEST PRESS, out of 4)
• Terror – Lowest Of The Low (YELLOW MARBLE, 1st press, out of 1000)
• Terror – Lowest Of The Low (CLEAR, 2nd press, out of 1000)
• Terror – Lowest Of The Low 10” (YELLOW)
• Terror – Lowest Of The Low 10” (YELLOW w/BLACK SPLATTER)
• Terror – One With The Underdogs (TEST PRESS, Erika labels, out of 20)
• Terror – One With The Underdogs (YELLOW, out of 150)
• Terror – One With The Underdogs (WHITE, out of 150)
• Terror – One With The Underdogs (GREEN, out of 700)
• Terror – Always The Hard Way (RED, Lockin Out)