It’s 9pm on a Friday night. Terrorvision have just arrived on stage in the small Ballroom at the Dreamland venue. Surprisingly, for a name band pitching themselves at a middle aged audience, many of whom in the local area are affluent and often up for a night out, it isn’t a sell out. The venue is approximately half full, bringing back memories of Carter USM man Jim Bob’s undersold show in the same location in April 2024.
Unlike Jim, though, the lads aren’t sulking about it. Halfway through opening number ‘Discoteque Wreck’ – which attacks with immediacy, driven by a chunky guitar and a bass heavy sound – Tony Wright appears to be thrilled to be on stage. Sporting a very retro, blue-grey checked suit which looks a bit like one of Noddy Holder’s cast offs, he’s centre stage with a beaming grin, dancing manically. The sound is rough, but the energy coming from the band and into the audience is utterly immense. It’s obvious that this is the perfect opener for this fairly intimate show, and midway through the second number, it’s also clear that Wright’s dance wasn’t actually contrived to illustrate the narrative behind the previous song. He’s still lurching about like a man possessed, while the rest of Terrorvision crank out some hard edged riffs.
Greeting the crowd, the first bit of unrehearsed banter really sets the tone. “Whose gate?!”, Wright bellows, before pausing to add an amusing “…mahh-gate!” and with that, a spirited take on ‘Alice What’s The Matter?’ continues in a similarly energised way. Naturally, it has none of the finesse of the studio cut, and Tony’s mic appears to have been turned off. Visually, it’s easy to see he’s working very hard; audibly, he’s largely absent… A lot of Terrorvision performances in the past had a notably ramshackle air, but due to sound issues and a less than focused approach, tonight has already adopted an even looser feel. Not that this matters to anyone in the crowd; the front row are hanging off every note, and a little further back, a couple of groups of people with middle aged faces are jostling about in a more than enthused manner. In a little under ten minutes, Terrorvision already have the fans onside, and they know it.
A trio of oldies – including extremely chunky versions of ‘My House’ – which allows guitarist Mark Yates a little more room to stretch out and causes Tony to jump up and down like someone half his age during the faster end section – and ‘New Policy One’ show how well this band, noted for some great pop-rock tunes that appealed to an alternative crowd, can really rock out when the moment is called for, and ‘Still The Rhythm’ brings a massive wave of nostalgia, especially for those who saw the band several times in their mid 90s pomp. With a cleaner guitar tone finally coming through and a little more space within the sound mix, everything has started to sound a little better. This number also shares a really muscular bass tone from Leigh Marklew, before things settle down for a still new tune, ‘Electrocuted’. Wright uses the moment to plug the album ‘We Are Not Robots’ – a well received disc; Terrorvision’s first for thirteen years – and although the audience seem a little more sedate, the number goes down brilliantly, as do ‘Shine On’ and ‘Opposites Attract’, which are casually dropped into the setlist a little later.
Predictably, it’s the older tunes that people really came to hear, and much like ‘My House’, ‘American TV’ cranks the guitar sound considerably, and although Mark’s solo appears barely audible on this occasion, it doesn’t spoil a great track. ‘Josephine’, the only nod to 1998’s ‘Shaving Peaches’, feels hugely relevant in 2025 when sharing the opinion that your transgender friend is still your friend, and even though it’s quickly outshone by an absolutely manic ‘Do You Wanna Go Faster?’ – arguably the tightest Terrorvision will get, performance wise, on this occasion – its place in the set feels important. Forewarning the audience of something slow impending, Tony begins to announce ‘Some People Say’, before being approached by Leigh, who takes his ear. It appears that Tony, in all of his genuine excitement has “missed loads of the set”, and then everyone circles back for a solid take of ‘Baby Blue’, joined by a woman sporting an array of feathers and looking like a stripper from 1973. It’s a little odd to see her performing in this way in 2025, but it definitely helps to create a memorable moment, before another new number ‘You Gotta Want To Be Happy’ strongly suggests that ‘We Are Not Robots’ is the band’s best release since 1996’s ‘Regular Urban Survivors’.
If anything can be said for Terrorvision, it’s that they really know how to structure a set for the best impact. The latter part of the show brings hit after hit: the slower ‘Some People Say’ slides into a raw ‘Middleman’ (which Wright suggests is “from the last Millennium which practically makes it a folk song, so you gotta sing”), before a pleasingly rowdy ‘Perseverance’ finds Wright, surprisingly, hitting his vocal marks more often than expected, considering the amount he’s bouncing around and the vocal gymastics that are required. An even faster ‘If I Was You’ turns a ‘Regular…’ highlight into a gig highlight, and the brilliant ‘Celebrity Hit List’ allows for even more crowd participation. Closing the set, ‘Pretend Best Friend’ comes adorned with some frighteningly live sounding trumpet, but is otherwise great, especially from an audience perspective. It’s still very much a case that Terrorvision aren’t the band to see if you’re the kind of person who expects the material to be translated with a slick sound or musical perfection, but in terms of a band really cutting loose, this has also been a stand out in terms of all-round fun. …And that’s what Terrorvision aim to give their fans – a huge amount of fun, and often nothing more.
Tonight brings just a one song encore, and Wright does his absolute best to get the audience jumping during fan favourite ‘Oblivion’, but the average age of the crowd means that most manage little more than an enthused bend back and forth. That’s not stopping Tone from jumping up and down himself, though, and given the effort he’s put into that, it’s easy to forgive any missed lyrics.
As the band leaves the stage, there are a lot of smiles near the front of the venue. It has been far from perfect, but no-one has been disappointed, and they’ve certainly not been sold short, with most of the hits present within a mammoth twenty three song set.
This has been one of those gigs where the energy in the room has more than made up for a multitude of shoddy elements. It possibly says something about how forgiving fans can be in the glow of pure nostalgia, but this has definitely been one of those shows where you needed to be present to get the best of everything – even at Terrorvision’s more rough and ready, it’s been a blast; a welcome distraction from the real world for a packed ninety minutes. It’s certainly going to be a night that the Thanet based crowd will remember for a long time.
Words by Lee Realgone
Photo by Katy
March 2025