Across two decades, seven studio albums, multiple live records, EPs and splits, and innumerable shows, L.A. hardcore veterans Terror have paid their dues, earned the respect of their peers and helped inspire a new generation of mosh-starters such as Knocked Loose and Year of the Knife. They're true "keepers of the faith," a phrase that fittingly serves as the title of the band's watershed fourth album, which was released 10 years ago as of August 2020.
Along the way, frontman Scott Vogel has seen many of hardcore's finest players in action, and that being the case, we asked him to assemble his dream four-piece, picking whatever vocalist, guitarist, bassist and drummer he wanted based on his years of experience and observation. He put together a killer supergroup — read on.
VOCALS: FREDDY CRICIEN, MADBALL
Definitely Freddy Madball is fronting the band. He has total bounce in his rhythm. His voice is great. He looks cool. I mean, he's getting up there in age, and for how much he has toured, he still goes off every night. On top of that, he's a super cool person and a total gentleman. He's just an overall great guy. Give him the mic and they know no one can do it like him, in my opinion. No one. And I try my hardest to emulate him. He's unstoppable. He's the frontman.
GUITAR: BEN REED, EARTH CRISIS
I'm going to go with like a total wild card on guitar. When Earth Crisis first came out, they had a guitarist who played on the first two 7-inches and was out by Destroy the Machines. He was a badass guitarist named Ben Reed — dude had the illest stage presence for guitars that I've ever seen. He was insane. He went off harder than anyone and had a cool look to him — weird, little white-boy dreadlocks. And he was just ... I mean, if anyone reading this and doesn't know, maybe search a really old Earth Crisis video on YouTube from, like, when Firestorm came out and check out his style. I'm putting him on guitar.
BASS: JARED CARMAN, TRAPPED UNDER ICE, DOWN TO NOTHING
He's got his moments of aggression onstage, but he also can lay back. He's a psychopath in life, too.
DRUMS: MACKIE, CRO-MAGS
On drums, you can't fuck with Mackie's style. The way he plays, and just the way he sets his drums up, whether he has the drum tilted or straight, sunglasses or no sunglasses ... He's just the No. 1 thing.
