A look back at the great post-punk/goth band from London...
Radio 1, Top of the Pops, Melody Maker, Smash Hits, MTV and the Chart Show… Terminal Gods belong to the mainstream, which is perhaps a surprising thing to say about a band invoking the spirit of Goth: a genre that has been missing in action since The Sisters Of Mercy last grazed the top-five with a re-recording of ‘Temple of Love’ in 1992. Twenty-one years on, and the pop-mainstream is a different place. No-one seems to know who’s in the hit-parade, MTV doesn’t play music videos; and Smash Hits, Melody Maker, and the Chart Show are all long-gone. If you listen to radio and watch TV, someone called Adele seems to be quite popular, but everyone who loves music listens to what they really like on Spotify and Groove Shark.
For Terminal Gods, the ‘Death of the Mainstream’ is a moot point. They’re carrying on regardless: behaving – outrageously - like a band about to enter its ‘Imperial Phase’… but in 1984. If you imagine Ian Astbury (without the American-Indian wolf-child nonsense), with Annie Lennox’s hair, fronting Duran Duran, but with Depeche-Mode era Vince Clark producing, then you’re kind of in the right ball-park. Befittingly for a band carrying the mantel of an electro-pop super group, bassist Katie Haley-Halinski is clear that Terminal Gods want to be big...
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