Terminal Amusements
(DINE ALONE RECORDS)
We open on a wide-angle shot of what appears to be Times Square in the late seventies before Giuliani turned it into a Disneyland for tourists. The streets are teeming with back-alley deals, random acts of violence and seedy dive bars. This setting, which shall be known as The City, is the backdrop for Drakulas’ second full-length Terminal Amusements, titled after the illicit video game arcade where we find our protagonist. This isn’t a rock opera exactly, but it is a teenage wasteland. “It’s a made-up world that’s an amalgam of old New York movies that I saw when I was a little kid,” Drakulas’ frontman Mike Wiebe (Riverboat Gamblers, High Tension Wires) explains. “I’d never been to New York so my perception of the place was influenced by everything from The Warriors and Taxi Driver to the opening credits of Welcome Back, Kotter.” Created alongside longtime co-conspirator, guitarist Zach Blair (Rise Against, Hagfish) and a cast of Texas musicians including bassist Rob Marchant and drummer Ian Walling from Riverboat Gamblers as well as Mark Ryan from The Marked Men, Terminal Amusements isn’t a side-project but a fully realized musical idea years in the making.
Like many of us who grew up in the eighties, Wiebe’s first glimpse of punk came in the form of popular sitcoms such as Quincy and CHiPS. “Watching those episodes of kids with dyed hair and piercings, it just seemed so different from the suburbs of Texas where I grew up,” Wiebe explains, adding that the cityscapes he saw on television as a kid seemed as relatable to him as Narnia or Middle Earth at the time. “I grew up in Texas in a town that had one building over five stories tall, so the idea of a metropolis seemed like some Blade Runner type of stuff.” While Wiebe would go on to play numerous Warped Tours, accumulate countless battle scars and release celebrated punk-inspired albums with Riverboat Gamblers, High Tension Wires and Ghostknife, he never lost that childhood sense of awe and channeled that into Drakulas’ highly anticipated follow-up to 2017’s Raw Wave. Terminal Amusements also marked the return of a fruitful partnership between Wiebe and Blair, the latter of whom spent much of the subsequent few years touring behind Rise Against’s 2017 album Wolves.
“Zac and I took a different kind of process with this record in the sense that instead of rehearsing with a full band, the two of us just sat in a room with GarageBand and built these songs with a computer,” Wiebe explains. “It was something that neither of us were really used to but for this project it really worked.” From there the band showed the material to Marchant and Ian Walling and teamed up with producer/engineer Stuart Sikes (White Stripes, Rocket From The Crypt) to capture these songs in their rawest form. “Stuart engineered White Blood Cells and he’s really easy to work with; he will tell you when something is not quite right and that’s the main thing we needed.” Finally, Wiebe traveled from Austin to Fort Worth to meet up with Mark Ryan and spent a weekend adding sounds from Ryan’s massive collection of eighties synthesizers. “It was really important for me to make sure that I was capturing the sound of a time period without aping it,” Wiebe explains. “All of the analog stuff we used was super cool and I liked using it, but I didn’t want to pretend that I was transported here from 1979.”
Musically Terminal Amusements evokes everyone from the Dead Boys to The Dickies and recalls a time when punk and new wave skirted a blurred sonic line. From the fuzzed-out pop of “Level Up” to the synth-heavy hooks of “Cafe Hiroshima” and infectious guitar riff on “Fashion Forward,” the album sees the band exploring a wider range of influences this type around while still sounding inherently like Drakulas. “I’m really happy with the way ‘Fashion Forward’ came out because I knew there was something in there and it just did not work for the longest time,” Wiebe explains when asked about the songwriting process. “I kept going back and tweaking it for months and it paid off in that now it tends to be the song people keep mentioning. It was a good reminder for me to stick with my gut and keep pounding on an idea if I think there’s something there.” The song is also immortalized with a memorable music video that evokes Andy Warhol-inspired character who is obsessed with fame — and in Terminal Amusements’ alternative universe also runs a sex cult, naturally.
In many ways, Wiebe views the current incarnation of Drakulas as a collective similar to Queens Of the Stone Age with him and Blair conceptualizing the ideas from their headquarters in Austin. “I’m definitely a glass half empty person and Zach is a glass half full guy and it really helps me out to have a person like that around,” Wiebe says of the duo’s creative dynamic. “Sometimes I get kind of frustrated on something and will be ready to give up and he keeps going and other times vice versa,” he continues. “A lot of times I”ll go ‘I see it this way’ but I’m open to someone convincing me that it can be another way. I always try to remind myself if it’s not a choice that I’m really willing to fight over then there’s probably a different way to do it that might be even better.” That type of open-mindedness is something that’s learned over decades and the pursuit of new possibilities is what lies at the core of Terminal Amusements.
Similarly there are no limitations when it comes to what Drakulas could accomplish with this latest album, especially once they start performing these new songs live. “I’ve had other projects over the years that I’m really proud of that would put out a couple of 7-inches and play a few shows, but I feel like this project really has legs and puts a different spin on what I’ve done in the past,” Wiebe explains. That said, he is quick to point out that Drakulas’ performances will be totally different than the legendary shows he’s fronted for Riverboat Gamblers, even going so far as to set creative rules for Drakulas that are more liberating than they are limiting. (For example, Drakulas’ live shows will see the group dressed as a fictionalized street gang and not breaking character while the lyrics eschew any modern references.) “Having creative things to work around with this project has been really exciting,” Wiebe summarizes. “It’s really engaging to have a new work environment. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different and that makes it fun.”
If there’s going to be an apocalypse, we can’t think of a better soundtrack.
