Month: September 2017

Terror, a household name in hardcore for over 15 years and still going strong. With a new release ready and a Sunday appearance on Ieperfest 2017 main stage, we thought it was time to sit down with Terror guitar player Martin Stewart and pick his brain on the new record and more.

Welcome back to Ieperfest, not your first one here and probably not the last either. Excited about playing today?

Thanks, I assume. It's a little different this time then it's been in the past. Everything is in the tents now. I went and saw the tent, it looks really cool.

So this is a full on hardcore fest, but you get into all sorts of festivals and venues during touring. What's the weirdest one or where did you feel most out of place playing with Terror?

There is this one time we played this festival in…i can't remember the name of the city but it's in Finland. I think the festival is called like Elora Rocks or something. It was on an island of the coast of Helsinki. There was not other like aggressive music on it all. The person that played before was on stage with a piano and some candles and stuff. It wound up being really cool anyway. I don't know if people even knew who we were or juste excited about loud music or something. It was a great time, we had a blast. There was this band US3, they did this song Cantalope in the 90's. This like pop hit songs they played too, we like hung out with them. It was like a really weird out of place mixture but it wound being really cool.

Late April you released an EP titled The Walls Will Fall. How was it received by the fans?

So far so good, no complaints. We've played songs of it and it goes well. I think the songs are really cool, i like it.

There is a Madball cover on the EP, Step To You. As Madball is playing Ieperfest today, can we expect some guest vocals by Freddy?

We did do that at Black 'N Blue Bowl in New York City, Freddy come cout. We actually practiced before that to play that but we haven't played it since then so i don't know how well it would sound.

Terror is celebrating it's 15^th year in 2017. Anything special planned to commerate this?

Not that we talk about. I don't know, i think it' cool when bands do like anniversaries and this and that. But i just don't know if we are the type of band to do that kind of thing. I can't say no but it doesn't seem like anyone like will want to do it. It's not likely. Maybe if it was like 20 years or something like that. I've been in the band now for like 12 years, maybe if we make it to 20.

You recently got a new bass player in the band, Chris. How has it been?

He took over David's spot. David got married recently and he was just ready to be at home and be a husband. We like talk to him almost every single day. He keeps up with what we are doing on the road. It was like a perfect switch, him and David are like the same person. They both are frontmen in their own band, they're straightedge guys. They almost seem to like dress the same, it was weird to see, he's almost like David. But he is his own thing too. We've known him forever and it's been going really good. He rips. It feels good with this one.

Terror is one of the pole bearers of hardcore these days, but growing up you probably first met punkrock along the way. How do you feel about punkrock?

Nowadays? To be honest, i don't really know too much about newer punk bands. I'm not sure who is calling himself punk right now. There's this band tthat's called Warthog that i like that to me it sounds like punk and it's like a punk band to me but they consider themselves to be a hardcore band. Which is cool also. There is like this band Total Chaos we're playing with. I used to go see them when i was like 13 years old in LA. They were a big part of getting me involved in punk. And they are still playing.

Any upcoming news you can share about Terror in the future?

We have two shows coming up in the US. It's called the Life and Death tour. Which we did the whole thing last year, this year we're just playing a few dates. And our other guitar player Jordan his band No Warning is playing, they're on the whole tour. And we'll be back here for Persistence Tour in January, we've done that tour many times before and it's probably all of our favorite tour to do. It's alway so cool and the line up is so insane. We've played a lot of shows with Hatebreed in Europe but we've never done a tour with them. I'm exited to be on the road with them over here in Europe. They are one of the best bands ever. And then we will be recording pretty soon. We have tentative plans for all of 2018, we kind of plan in advance because we are all getting older and we need to have our schedules like set. Staying active.