by Don Gerard, July, 2005

"Duality makes for great superheroes and great rock bands.

However, let me backtrack a bit. For the past 15 years the local music community in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois has banded together for a benefit dubbed 'The Great Cover-Up'. In years past Poster Children have performed as Elvis and the Who, Hum was Led Zepplin, the Moon Seven Times did Alice Cooper one year and Van Halen another. You get the idea.

"I'm sure a lot of people were, like, whatever, but it was something I just had to do," Scotty Kimble says.

His band, Terminus Victor, chose to cover Slint last year.

Standing in the snow a month later, wearing his omnipresent wool hat and fingerless gloves, Scotty cuts a decidedly Dickensian figure. He half-smiles and, in a barely audible voice, mumbles, 'Maybe we should've done something else, but, oh, I don't know, I just felt like I had to try.

Herein lies some insight into what sets Terminus Victor so far apart (and, by the way, immensely above) a vast majority of the current crop of indie rockers vying for the attention of the punk-pop-fence-post-modern set.

Allow me to digress even further. Having spent four decades in the Midwest (and 20 of those years in the music 'business') I have come to realize two of the primary architects of this time zone's rock music are Cheap Trick and Steve Albini.

Like Albini's breakthrough rock act, Big Black, (the also drummerless) Terminus Victor explore/exploit the notion of combining man and machine. Human vocals backed by a ferocious mechanical back beat.

The difference being Albini's ego would not allow him to be anything but cocksure and as cold and unyielding as his Roland drum patterns while Kimble, on the other hand, often seems vulnerable; eschewing logic for gut instinct (Slint? A sold-out venue and the guy play songs only Rose Marshack and seven other people have ever even heard?).

Duality. Only so much can be planned, written in advance. Only so many issues can be rationalized and understood. The passion is not manufactured angst. Unlike the cartoon characters Albini creates Kimble's songs come from not from his imagination, but somewhere deeper within.

Which brings me to Cheap Trick: brilliant, dangerous, popular, rock deities, rock oddities often melding sing-along melodies with disturbingly creepy lyrics. Gods and Geeks, pretty boys and punks, geniuses and savants. Christ, it was as if a chunk of your high school class were all represented in one four-piece, guitar-rock combo.

Within Terminus Victor the metaphor is even more economical. Guitarist Don King (nattily adorned in crisp, business formal attire) grinds out molar-rattling chords while flailing about the stage like a scarecrow in a twister portraying both the straight man and jester to Kimble's post-grunge anti-rockstar.

Duality.

There have been an assload and a half of popular bands come out of this town. There have even been a few good ones. I have seen literally hundreds of those bands (and thousands of from elsewhere) and rarely does one give me the impression it is anything beyond what I believe them to be.

Cobain was a kid from Aberdeen who dreamed of rock stardom. Once he was a rock star he realized he just wanted to be a kid from Aberdeen. Dylan was a folk singer who went electric (as well as a Jew who went Gentile and back again). Duality.

Bun E. Carlos and Rick Neilson were a chubby guy and somewhat of a weirdo from Rockford, Illinois.

Steve Albini was a kid who grew up in Missoula, Montana, loved to play baseball and planned on getting a degree in journalism in college.

Peter Parker. Bruce Wayne. Clark Kent. Duality.

Kimble and King, too, remain a paradox.

Which is precisely why they belong on the long list of popular bands...and remain on my short list of good ones."

Terminus Victor was initiated in 2000 to create energetic rock music using a drum machine named 'She'. Their music described as an "electro-rockomatic-neo-inferno" is captured on the band's freshman and sophmore records created and released in 2002 and 2005 respectively. After two records, the machine and dual human crew felt it may be time to part ways, and pursue new germinations along the Terminus Victor viral strain. Opportunity arose soon after 'She' moved to Portland in 2006 when Terry Wathen tried out the band. Now three members strong, talents and personalities align into a centrifugal serum of music creation, growth and expansion. Fans who loved the 100% performance energy level with 'She' measured a boost to 150% with the addition of Terry's dynamic drumming. At the sametime, politely retracting not to offend the work done with 'She'. Terminus Victor has a contagious future infected with a strong base of current and new songs composed by Scott Kimble, and crafted into works of art by the band. They plan to record and release a record of new material in 2008, and their musical infection spreads from a Champaign/Chicago base out into the surrounding region.