Terminal Lovers, As Eyes Burn Clean

The Terminal Lovers play droney, guitar-heavy psychedelic rock. On As Eyes Burn Clean, they bounce between shorter, poppier songs and longer freak-outs, with lots of epic guitar work, powerful riffs, and a tight sound. There are a few decent parts on the album, but nothing really unique and different. Most of the album is ranges between boring and bad. As Eyes Burn Clean is a waste of the vinyl they pressed it on.

The band sounds tight and focused, even during the freer parts. And everybody has the technical ability — the guitar players can solo, and the bass and drums can play. And the instrumentalists have pretty good taste in their playing, too, but they’re just not interesting or original. There’s one decent song here, “Press the Bank,” which builds tension with a wall of feedback that turns into dueling guitars, and then most of the way through the song they finally sing the melody, which is short and sweet and effective. But the other songs are all bad. And even their good parts start to sound the same after a while.

The Terminal Lovers’ real shortcoming is the singing. There’s one interesting vocal on the record, on the first song. (Maybe that’s why it’s good; it’s very, very short!) Their singer sings Stooges-style melodies, which he just can’t pull off — he’s too inoffensive, and his voice is too odd to be able to sing that kind of song, even when the melodies are okay. But the other melodies on the album are like “Truth Between Errors Pt. 1,” which has a really bad and totally oversung melody, and some really dumb harmonies. It just comes out hammy. That’s the problem with every other song on the album, as well.

As Eyes Burn Clean is a mess. There are a few cool parts here and there, but it’s just not worth the effort. There are maybe two or three songs’ worth of good bits here, but they’re overwhelmed by the tedium of the rest of the album. They could have edited it down to a single rather than a full LP. The instrumental bits are better than the melodies, which really drag everything down — maybe they could fire their singer? The Terminal Lovers have potential, but here it’s almost entirely squandered.