Garbage Days Revisited #2: Terrorvision - "Formaldehyde" (1993)

"We don't ask for a lot but we get even less..." - Terrorvision, Problem Solved!

Ever since I started doing retrospectives in this blog, I've been looking for an excuse to do something on Terrorvision and trust me, I've started a Sounds From The Junkshop column on them and then abandoned it many times. The trouble is, for a band who come from the same town as I do (Bradford) and who I've almost certainly seen live more times than any other (to be honest, only the Wildhearts come anywhere near close), I seem to have a distinct lack of tales about following them around the country etc the way I do with Ginger and co. Put it down to the fact that they nearly always seem to play near where I live when they tour meaning I've yet to do a "Terrorvision roadtrip" so to speak or put it down to the fact that, unlike the Wildhearts, while they can rock out with the best of them they're a comparatively sensible and well-behaved band in the main* but for a band who've been such a heavy part of my life for nearly three decades, I've got a depressing lack of "war stories" about them to recount. And because they're still out there touring to this day having reconvened on and off for the last fifteen years, they're a difficult one to pigeonhole as being part of a specific era in my life as, similar to the Wildhearts, they've pretty much been a constant meaning it kind of feels wrong to put them in the Sounds From The Junkshop column as they're still able to tour the country and pack out good sized venues to this day.

(* I always remember reading an article on the excellent Sleazegrinder website by a writer a few years older than myself talking about the difference between Quireboys and Dogs D'Amour gigs at the start of the decade where he mentioned that with the Quireboys you always got the impression that while they may well have been having a few bevvies backstage pre-show, as soon as they hit the stage a slick veneer of professionalism would kick in and they'd throw themselves wholeheartedly into delivering the goods to the audience. Whereas with the Dogs, they'd hit the stage and whatever the fuck they'd just been ingesting would usually kick in which could make for an equally exciting show but for very different reasons. I think the same is true for the mid-'90s when I grew up - for the Quireboys see Terrorvision and for the Dogs, see the Wildhearts. You certainly wouldn't get Terrorvision smashing their instruments up in a fit of rage or having at least one member clearly out of their tree on something or other and forgetting the songs and while this arguably made TV gigs a bit more predictable, they were never anything less than supremely entertaining). 

Anyway, I first heard Bradford's finest in late '93 when a metalhead friend who I used to occasionally swap mix tapes with (I think I might've mentioned him in the Love/Hate SFTJ entry) did me a tape with their then-single New Policy One on it which had just missed the Top 40 a few weeks before. I remember him making a big deal about it and saying that I should keep an ear out for that track especially because the band were from our neck of the woods. The track didn't instantly jump out at me but I remember it was one I kept coming back to and when the follow-up, a re-release of My House which had originally seen the light of day about a year earlier, surfaced in the early days of 1994 I went out and bought it and it duly became the first of many Top 40 hits for the band.

Both New Policy One and My House were taken from the band's debut album Formaldehyde which had come out in mid-'93 but to be honest, it's an album I only really listened to a few times when I bought it. The reason is that by the time My House hit the charts upon its re-release, Terrorvision pretty much already had the follow-up in the can - the next single Oblivion hit the Top 20 in April and the group's second album How To Make Friends And Influence People (widely regarded as their best) would follow. Similar to the Wildhearts a year or so later, I bought How To Make Friends... the week it came out and picked up Formaldehyde the same day. Although I did listen to Formaldehyde a few times, its successor was a much more immediate album rammed with instant classics (Pretend Best Friend, Middleman, Stop The Bus, Still The Rhythm, What The Doctor Ordered, Time o'the Signs) and just kind of edged it out of my listening to slowly gravitate to the back of my CD rack. I suspect that was the problem - by the time people got wise to Terrorvision, that album had pretty much already run its course and it's been relegated to a bit of a footnote in the band's history with a reputation as the album where the group were still kind of finding their feet a bit. Indeed, it was only a few years ago that I dug it out and listened to it properly again after well over a decade and was pretty surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

My relationship with rock music by 1993-94 or so was a bit of a weird one if I'm honest. As I've said in previous SFTJ's, I definitely had a bit of a glam metal streak running through me in my early days of liking guitar music and had singles and albums by the Dogs D'Amour, the Quireboys, the Almighty, Guns 'n' Roses, Skid Row, Love/Hate, Poison, WASP, AC/DC and Iron Maiden among others in my tape rack. However, the change of tide from sleaze rock to grunge (which as I've said before I just never saw the appeal of) sort of pushed me off down the less-travelled road of fraggle via the Senseless Things, the Wonder Stuff, Carter USM, Ned's Atomic Dustbin et al. But it didn't stop the odd heavier band breaking into my favourites - when I first heard Therapy?'s frenetic Opal Mantra, it quickly led to them becoming firm favourites of mine and their Troublegum album and Hats Off To The Insane singles collection EP were never far from my stereo in those days. Faith No More were another band I was pretty loyal to in this era as well ever since seeing the amazing video for Epic on Top of the Pops - similar to the Wildhearts a few years later, their general attitude of ignoring the musical rules and not giving a fuck who they offended well and truly drew me in. Similarly, the one grunge band I genuinely enjoyed (although let's be honest, I think most would agree that they weren't ever really a comfortable fit in that genre) were the Smashing Pumpkins and their Siamese Dream album was another that I was regularly listening to back then. Listening to Formaldehyde now, I genuinely think that if I'd heard it on its own terms in 1993 rather than next to the follow-up a year later, it probably would have been a regular on my listening list as well.

The first thing that needs to be said about Formaldehyde is it's a much less poppy, and darker, album than the albums that'd follow it (How To Make Friends And Influence People, Regular Urban Survivors and Shaving Peaches, all fine efforts in their own right) and I think that's what makes it quite a fascinating listen. Yes, it is very much the sound of a band working on the formula that'd eventually take them to bona fide chart stardom from 1994 onwards but there's plenty to enjoy on there. Weirdly, there's a bit of a Red Hot Chili Peppers style funk-metal vibe on the likes of Ships That Sink and American TV (New Policy One's predecessor) while the sinister likes of Jason, Hole In My Soul and Don't Shoot My Dog, the chugging riff of Urban Space Crime and the gentle acoustic-led Killing Time show a very different side of the band to the Slade-influenced singalong merchants we all know and love.

There's signs of what would come here as well obviously especially with My House which is easily the poppiest song on here and points the way on to what Terrorvision would become. I remember talking about this album with a fellow TV fan a while back and they mentioned that a lot of people still seem to think that song's on How To Make Friends And Influence People where it would have fit right in, arguably unlike the rest of the material on here (the only other one I can really think of is the off-kilter B-side Tea Dance).

Nevertheless, like I say, Formaldehyde is an interesting document of a band in transition and definitely deserves revisiting if you've forgotten about it. It's not as immediate as Terrorvision's later output but there's plenty to enjoy here.

I would end up seeing Terrorvision live for the first time at St George's Hall in Bradford in April just before How To Make Friends... came out and would have seen them again twice in the next 12 months at Leeds T&C with Baby Chaos (another under-rated band still plugging away out there) supporting and back at St George's the following May. By this time, they'd chalked up a massive five Top 40 hits from How To Make Friends and established themselves as the frontrunners of the Britrock movement along with the Wildhearts. Their shows were always great fun - Tony Wright remains one of the most naturally charismatic Britrock frontmen to this day and behind him Mark, Leigh and Shutty were always good at keeping the rhythm flowing well.

The group's star would continue to rise through 1995 and 1996 - Tony would become a regular guest on panel shows such as Never Mind The Buzzcocks with his down to earth personality and deadpan sense of humour and the group would get good press in both Kerrang! and the indie papers. The thing about Terrorvision was that they had that most rare of knacks - a rock group who were tuneful and melodic enough to appeal to Britpop fans as well. When the NME referred to them as a '90s Slade, it really wasn't that far off the mark.

1996's Regular Urban Survivors would see Terrorvision going on to even greater commercial heights with Perseverance and Bad Actress both hitting the Top 10 and Easy and Celebrity Hitlist just missing out and killer tunes such as Dog Chewed The Handle, If I Was You and the Britpop-bashing Superchronic (which took pot shots at both Oasis and Supergrass) cementing the group in the top Britrock echelons. However, as 1997 turned to 1998, the Britrock movement was starting to fall apart with the Wildhearts, Baby Chaos and Kerbdog all splitting up leaving Terrorvision and Therapy? as the main proponents. There's an argument that the movement had profited from grunge falling out of fashion following Kurt Cobain's untimely death in 1994 (though contrary to the popular narrative it didn't just go away - many of the leading lights like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains continued to plough on for a bit but their commercial star was well and truly on the wane by 1995 or so as the more cheery vibes of Britpop and Britrock took over the zeitgeist from rainy Seattle miserabilism) with only Green Day, the Offspring, the Smashing Pumpkins and slightly later the Foo Fighters really making any sort of commercial headway over in the UK during this era. However, by 1997, times were starting to move on - with Britpop dead in the water, the group's indie crossover died off as alternative music started to drift more towards Radiohead style downbeat stuff and the Kerrang! led metal press were starting to pay more attention to the likes of Limp Bizkit and Korn which would eventually coagulate to form the repulsive nu-metal movement.

Terrorvision's fourth album Shaving Peaches was released into the Britrock backlash and suffered commercially - a real shame as it's another fine effort and I could easily have included it in here as a chronically under-rated album that just happened to come out at slightly the wrong time - In Your Shoes, Swings And Roundabouts, Vegas and especially the mournful When I Die are all fine stuff indeed. However, when their comeback single Josephine stalled at number 23 in the charts, it must have set alarm bells ringing especially as Therapy? had recently been dropped by A&M following the under-performance of the Semi-Detatched album. In the end though, it would be the following single that would initially look like saving them but would ultimately finish them.

The song in question of course was Tequila (written about the time Tony Wright, after a few shots of the old cactus juice, broke his ankles while trying to scale the roof of a Hard Rock Café to steal the "H" and make the sign more Yorkshire!), a number two hit after Mint Royale (responsible for remixing Lauren Laverne's Don't Falter and turning it into a Top 20 hit) got hold of it and did a remix which promptly got airplayed to death on Radio 1 and took the charts by storm. Unfortunately, it's a classic case of Boo Radleys syndrome - a song which bears absolutely no relation to the rest of the band's output (I remember an exasperated review in Melody Maker proclaiming “Zoe Ball and Mint Royale can both fuck right off - this band are way too good to get an easy ride like this”) and when the follow up single III Wishes promptly missed the Top 40, the group were dropped by EMI. They'd continue to battle away and I remember seeing them live a good few times during this era as they really were touring like absolute buggers to keep their name out there. A new album, Good To Go (containing the Top 40 hit D'You Wanna Go Faster? and the immortal swearfest Friends And Family, still a live favourite to this day), would eventually surface in 2001 but their time was arguably gone by then and it bombed. A few months later, Terrorvision would quietly disband. It really did feel like the end of an era.

The split wouldn't be permanent though and the group would reconvene with a new album Super Delux in 2011. Although a bit more inconsistent than its predecessors, it was definitely a grower with the likes of Demolition Song, All The Girls Wanna Dance and Neighbourhood being good additions to the group's repertoire. In the interim, the various members had been keeping busy with Tony forming the more downbeat Laika Dog*, Mark playing guitar for Blunderbuss and Leigh forming the under-rated Malibu Stacey. These days, the group still resurface every year or two for the odd reunion tour (albeit minus Shutty who left amicably a decade or so ago) and there's talk of a new album being in the works following a surprise Christmas single last year. Further developments keenly awaited by this writer obviously. In a strange full circle kind of way, Terrorvision were also the last band I saw live before the lockdown kicked in at Leeds Warehouse supported by the excellent Eureka Machines. I can't quite believe that's over a year ago as I write this. Having seen them well and truly steal the show on the Britrock Must Be Destroyed Tour with the Wildhearts and Reef a couple of years back, I can happily confirm they've still got it as a live band as well.

* My first interview as a music journalist was with Tony prior to a Laika Dog gig at the sadly missed Bradford Gasworks venue - he was a thoroughly nice bloke and an absolute pleasure to talk to. He's also put out a couple of solo albums in the melancholy Thoughts 'n' All and the more upbeat Walnut Dash in recent years in between Terrorvision tours which are both well worth your attention.

Anyway, it looks like this column has turned into less of an album revisited and more of a career retrospective. No apologies though - Terrorvision remain a great band whose back catalogue deserves investigating by those who haven't. Obviously for the newcomers How To Make Friends And Influence People and Regular Urban Survivors are the places to start but give Formaldehyde a spin as well - it's very different from its predecessors but a good listen in its own way. Shaving Peaches is also very under-rated and Good To Go and Super Delux while not quite up to the standards of their predecessors are still more than respectable efforts with plenty to recommend.

And yeah, hopefully that new album might just be a thing one day soon. If so, rest assured we'll be straight on the case to review it here at Nite Songs.