Terminal - How The Lonely Keep (CD)

All Music Guide

How the Lonely Keep is the Tooth Nail debut of Terminal, who used to be known as Letter Twelve back in Mansfield, TX. They're a young quintet with a heavy influence from Further Seems Forever, where pleading verses habitually explode into headnodding chorus proclamations flanked by triumphantly crashing guitars. It's an approach tapped by countless bands attached to the Purevolume and MySpace nations (Tooth Nail's own Slow Coming Day being just one), and while the sound might be getting a little tired by 2005, the groups keep showing up on your local allages show docket. To their benefit Terminal stays away from the extremes of the style. They don't overindulge in contemplative pianos or strings in fact, the soft intro to "Dark" actually makes that tack work but they don't double Travis Bryant's vocal with a guy screaming bloody murder, either. "Watching, Wasting, Waiting," "Wisher," and "Just a Failure" are woundtight rockers. They lessen the punch of a band like Get Up Kids with ...loads of layered guitars and Bryant's occasional choirboy indulgence. But the songs move along capably enough. Terminal suffers a little lyrically on How the Lonely Keep, falling into the usual meditations on loneliness and leaning too hard on imagery. ("I became a desert to your raining....") On the other hand, "Miss Louisiana" is refreshingly direct when Bryant demands closure from his longdistance love, and its arrangement switches speeds well. "Maps" is also strong it could be the track to really kill in a live setting. Terminal needs some growth to be truly effective. But How the Lonely Keep is a stronger debut than the record's generic emo cover art and title would suggest. - Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide Read more Less