Chasing Fridays: Terror, Organ Tapes, Lowertown Q&A, more

I'd like to begin by shouting out a writer named Sloane DiBari who wrote a thoughtful and funny article for the Oberlin student newspaper, The Grape, about Pitchfork's paywall and the persistence of grassroots music journalism. Myself and a couple of my esteemed colleagues were nicely highlighted as writers who are keeping the flame of honest music criticism alive amidst the ever-shaky media landscape, and DiBari specifically mentioned that she's one of several Oberlin students "whose tastes are actively being shaped" by Chasing Sundays. That is an immensely kind and affirming thing to read. I put a lot of effort into this newsletter and don't often hear feedback from my readers (which is fine, that's the nature of how people, including myself, engage with media), so it's really inspiring to know that there's an enclave of people a decade younger than me who read and respect my shit.

And now onto my shit. This week's Chasing Fridays features a lengthy love letter to the L.A. hardcore titans Terror, who just announced their 10th album this week and dropped a single that's better than a band their age have any business being. Then, I wrote about a new Organ Tapes EP I can't stop listening to, admired a new shoegaze-ish band from London, and interviewed Lowertown about their forthcoming album, their friendship, their tastes, and more. I've published 36 of these mini-Q&A's on my website at this point, and paid subscribers get to read 'em all. They're fun. Some of them are actually pretty long. Some of them are short and sweet. All of them are worth reading for the insight and the recs. Just sayin'.

Terror - "Still Suffer"

Terror are the greatest hardcore band of the 21st century. There are hardcore bands who've made albums that I like more than any other Terror record (Trapped Under Ice, Cold World, Never Ending Game) and there are hardcore bands who I've enjoyed seeing live more than Terror (All Out War, Balmora, Turnstile circa 2015). But there aren't any hardcore bands from the last 20 years who are more consistently great than Terror. None. Their sound, a chunky form of NYHC loaded with giant chants and brutal chugs, appeals to practically anyone who considers themselves a hardcore fan. And the fact that they continue to sound as good as they ever have on their new single "Still Suffer" means that every active generation of hardcore fan, from 40-something vets to 15-year-old kids, has been able to witness this band in peak form. I don't know how they do it.

Like many millennial hardcore kids, Terror were my gateway into the genre. My entry point was Live By the Code, Terror's 2013 record that was generally viewed as a letdown by longtime fans, especially coming after 2010's career re-sparking Keepers of the Faith. Terror never play songs from Live By the Code live anymore, and I probably haven't listened to that album since early college. That's when I went back and heard Terror's crucial early material, 2003's ferocious Lowest of the Low and 2004's One With the Underdogs, the latter record being the one that made Terror titans of the genre via songs like "One With the Underdogs," "Keep Your Mouth Shut," "Overcome," "Spit My Rage" – god, there are so many great songs on that record.

Terror's discography isn't perfect. There are albums like 2008's The Damned, The Shamed and 2018's Total Retaliation that are just OK. However, these are not blemishes that have affected Terror's pedigree in any meaningful way because Terror's live show has never faltered. They have been an absolute powerhouse ever since they started, and even as he's past the 50-year mark today, frontman Scott Vogel remains one of the most energetic and inspiring vocalists in all of hardcore. I've seen Terror five times in the last two years alone, and every set was a fucking blast. They play all the hits you want to hear and everyone loses their shit. People who don't normally stagedive are stagediving. People who entered mosh retirement after the last Terror show come back for one more swing. Most importantly, the younger kids in hardcore lose their shit, too.

Nothing about Terror is dusty. They tour with cool, young hardcore bands not because it's strategic, but because they genuinely love hardcore and are still actively involved in the scene on a grassroots level. They never lecture the room about how things were back in their day. They're often the headliner, but they aren't too proud to be direct support when a younger band is having a moment, like they did with Drain a couple years ago, which surely introduced thousands of fresh-faced hardcore kids to Terror's music for the first time, continuing the endless life cycle of this endlessly exhilarating band. Their last album, 2022's Pain Into Power, was undoubtedly their best since Keepers of the Faith, and in my opinion, their best since One With the Underdogs. There's not a single hardcore band in Terror's age bracket who've made a record as good as Pain Into Power 20 years deep into their career. OK, maybe Converge. But that's it.

Later this spring, Terror will return with their tenth album, Still Suffer. Like Pain Into Power, this one was also produced by Todd Jones, the mastermind behind Nails and Carry On who was also an original member of Terror before departing the band in 2004. Jones is a maniac who's written some of the angriest, heaviest songs I've ever heard, and his hands-on guidance in the studio was a huge reason why Pain Into Power sounds so fucking good. "Still Suffer" the single is also really fucking good. It's classic Terror in all the right ways – raging vocals from Vogel, gym inspo gang-chants from the other guys, and a knuckle-dragging mosh part that already has me feeling phantom twinges of pain from when I inevitably take a hit seeing it live.

There's even a line in the chorus where Vogel deviates from his usual growl and sings the lyric, "I'm still suff-errr-ing," with a grungey tunefulness. It's a little more Life of Agony, a little more Biohazard than Terror usually get, and it works. Look at that: Terror are 10 albums and 24 years deep into this shit and they're still finding ways to adjust their timeless sound without stumbling over themselves like so many aging hardcore bands sadly have. There's literally no other hardcore band who'd get me this excited for their 10th album. It's not a genre that rewards deep catalogs. It's a genre where bands burn bright and quick, and then maybe reignite 10 years later for a reunion set before burning out once again.

Terror's flame has never flickered, and in the 2020s, they're arguably more beloved than they've ever been. There aren't enough stories like that in any genre of music. What Terror have is really fucking special. They make me so happy. Here's to another five Terror shows between now and 2027.

Organ Tapes - 一包烟 

After binging the emerging genre between the leaves changing and falling last autumn, I took a little sabbatical from cloud-rock over the winter. A lot of the stuff I was hearing at the end of last year was beginning to sound a little empty, a little superficial, a little dry. Organ Tapes' new EP, 一包烟, proves there's still plenty of misty, murky excellence to be wrung from this nascent mode of nimbostratus neo-pop. The London-via-Shanghai musician offers a crash course in the genre with these six songs. Opener "Cigs" has the nagging tension of an empty art gallery, that confluence of inspirational spaciousness and windowless claustrophobia. Organ Tapes' Blunt-ian auto-croons are interrupted by pitched-down ad-libs that resemble a rap producer tag, puncturing the milk skin of streaky guitars to remind the listener that this is a digi-rock simulacrum of what could've been four dudes jamming. Because that would be boring, wouldn't it?

The bookend track, "Trained," is a silvery slowcore crawl propelled by drum machine bumps that have all the vitality of a storefront mannequin. It reminds me a bit of Alex G's "Icehead" – a cloud-rock prototype – if it was stripped for parts and left to wither on the side of the highway. The cuts in between are the EP's "pop" songs. Organ Tapes sings most of the project in English except for the Chinese-language "蓝莲花", a jangly little ditty that fans of that Mark William Lewis record from last year will surely appreciate. "Mainland" is a drumless crescendo of shrieky guitars and layers of robo-dusted vocal harmonies that builds and builds until it breaks. It won't be long until the Vibes Music Industrial Complex pilfers cloud-rock to extract a new aesthetic for the same ole mindless playlist fodder. Projects like 一包烟 make it harder for the copycats to co-opt. Ingenuity as an act of resistance.

Norman D. Loco - "i want a beer"

I must say, it's nice to hear a noisy, art-damaged shoegaze band who aren't just ripping off They Are Gutting a Body of Water. Norman D. Loco are a London quartet who somehow scored an NTS session last year with only two singles to their name, both of which have under 1,000 streams on Spotify. The first, "House M.F.", is kind of like Feeble Little Horse without the perked-up humor, while "sustain" incorporates the kind of drum machine incisions and vaporous synths of Spirit of the Beehive's Entertainment, Death.

This new joint, "i want a beer," is totally different. It kicks off with a chipmunk soul sample bleating over some slackery strums, moves through a couple asymmetrical verses, disintegrates into sampled detritus, and then rebuilds itself back up into a garbled refrain that's guarded by tufts of barbed-wire feedback. I can't think of any cutting-edge shoegaze bands who've come out of London this decade, so it's cool to hear a group like Norman D. Loco shine some light on the genre's original nucleus. If their next single is as much of a leap as "i want a beer," then Philly's going to have to step it up.

Chasing Down

Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg
of
Lowertown

Chasing Down is a Q&A series with artists, friends, and others of good taste.

This was a fun one. Lowertown are the duo of singer-songwriters Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg, and their band's catalog runs the gamut from intimate bedroom-pop to shambling indie-punk. Lowertown used to be signed to Dirty Hit (The 1975, Beabadoobee) but are now on Run For Cover Records, who'll be issuing their first LP in four years, Ugly Duckling Union, later this spring. I'll be honest: I'm not really a Lowertown head. I'm mostly familiar with this group through Osby's solo work under the name Olivia O. I liked her late 2025 LP, Telescope, enough to check out whatever she ends up making going forward, which lead me to hearing Lowertown's latest single "I Like You A Lot" – a creaky, yearning, woozily catchy crush song that I do in fact like a lot.

For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Osby and Weinberg about how the band's identity has changed since their last record, their evolution as songwriters, their favorite crush songs, the themes on Osby's Telescope, and more. These are some smart, thoughtful musicians with great taste, and I really enjoyed reading their replies. Peep the full interview below.