Customer Reviews

Thermos

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although some of the songs are long winded and drone on a bit, this album has a few tracks that really stand out. "Zero Return" has a real haunting kind of melody to it. "Fish Eye" is good, too. "Skin" just blows me away. It rocks as hard as anything I've ever heard from Bailterspace. I can just listen to that one track over and over again. Their sound is good on this release, too. Overall, if you like Bailterspace this is worth having. If you are just getting into them I would try Vortura first.

Beautiful, noisy, strong tunes that Bailter Space did so well. This is one of their best with Fish Eye being a very good example of the band's ability to be tough and melodic. People just discovering the band may want to start with 1993's Robot World, their best record. Their live sets in the early and mid 1990s were unbelievably tight, loud and great.

Fantastic album!! not easy to find but well worth owning , every song is great it's that good an album 9/10

Everyone else has granted five stars, but this barely makes 3 for me. Why? The nine original songs toddle along in Wire/Cure/Joy Division-inspired/imitative style that is acceptable but does not take flight or become original. The trio has not yet gained control of the droning, oppressive, and hesitant rhythms that characterize a work like Robot World. But, the last three of the added four tracks on my Flying Nun Europe version from the Tanker lp show promise, especially the title track, where for the first time on this early album, the music grabs you and keeps you collared the whole song through until you want to hear it again.

As another fan remarked, this is far harsher, even in its embryonic state, than the usual 90s Flying Nun sound. If, by the way, you're enraptured by Thermos, check out the trio's earlier incarnation (also reviewed by me on Amazon) as The Gordons, whose only lp + ep have been reissued in NZ. Their sound similarly copied early 80s gloomsters; it's not bad, but not that inspired either. Finally, an early band from the early 80s, contemporaries of the Gordons, including of all people Roy Montgomery, The Pin Group, also has one album reissued on CD that shows New Zealanders enacting the Ian Curtis sonic experience. All three efforts are an acquired taste, but if you like the flavor of grey, all three bands I've mentioned may be for completists, as they say, only.

Okay,

Not everyone will like this, so I would recommend listening to some other New Zealand type music (i.e. Tall Dwarfs) along with some Sonic Youth before this. The music is the kind of music that builds up in your mind after a few listens. Definitely, a pattern in the noise that releases all your senses. You will find yourself humming almost for certain after a few listens and soon you will want their whole catalog...

A beautiful noise. Jangly, abstract tunes that work together to form a stunning, coherent whole.

listening to return zero and well basically the whole of the Thermos album was like a big slap in the face. where have i been all my life and not come across this shagadelically, fabulously, insane but amazing band. for all you out there just LISTEN.