Artist: Termiti
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2008
Rating: 4/5
What I’m holding in my hands is the 1996 reissue of the album “Vjeran pas”. It’s an anthology, or compilation, of all the material by Termiti that was sitting on recording tapes and cassettes, drawn from studio sessions and two live recordings. Termiti never actually released an album during their career. The only difference from the previous release is that the reissue now also comes with a multimedia section, where you can watch an excerpt from the film about Termiti, “Ritam rock plemena”, by director Bernardin Modrić.
This reissue is a no-brainer, and together with the triple-CD anthology “Riječki novi val” (2008) it marks the 30th anniversary of the punk uprising in Rijeka. Termiti had it all. They had a clear vision, they had an argument, a motive. That’s why they had so much charisma! They came about as a mirror of the society of those days, those long-gone times. They were street kids who decided to pour the everyday misery of surviving “teenagerhood” into the raw fist of furious “underground” rock. Incomparable with today, when bands present themselves all prestigious and pass off artificial glitz as alternative under a fake mask. Punk used to be an honest weapon of rebellion and struggle! A guitar in your hand and piercing words that hit 1000 times harder and more honestly than any bullet fired.
Who today will understand the lines about power cuts (Redukcija), the bold provocations aimed at religion (Zdravo Marija), the posing that has ironically flourished even in the “underground” these days (Šminkeri), the disregard for different individual views (Pobuna), sold souls (Vjeran pas), corruption (Baš vas briga)…. Young people (born in the ’80s and later), sadly, have a harder time. But this release is a real gem for the older crowd, who lived “punk” or were at least daily observers of that wave. It’s the music of a generation! And today “Vjeran pas” can even seem funny or naive,… Well, let’s rather say it can seem incomprehensible to the young.
Termiti “borrowed” the Ramones look, with bassist Mrle (now in Let 3) as the band’s most distinctive antagonist. Ripped jeans and leather jackets. The music? You don’t need Einstein. It’s completely bare. Screeching, out-of-tune riffs, and a vocal no less so: shrill, stripped down, crazy, dangerous, violent, with no illusions to live in. One of the finest punk riffs ever to come out of the soil of the late Yugoslavia is carried, without a doubt, by the song Vjeran pas, which in an instant lays out the guys and their rock mission, through a burning desire to stir up trouble in Yugoslavia like nobody ever had. There’s no end to the cheek, the filth, the clever humor and the arrogance in the songs Ja ne želim ništa, Mama z razlogom se brineš, Vremenska prognoza, Idem nestajem, Pobuna, Gibajmo se,… so banal, yet at the same time true and smart. The band’s gigs were an unforgettable adventure, where the guys staged real theater, courtesy of frontman Kralj, who wore a toilet bowl on his head instead of a space helmet, slipped a hanging rope around his neck, or cut his wrists on stage with a razor blade. Unheard of for those times!
The retrospective has just one “conditional” flaw and one unconditional flaw. Nobody went to any great lengths to polish up the recordings even a little in the studio, and they swing wildly in quality: the guitars swallow the sound on the monitors and wobble in volume from left to right, in places the bass drowns out the guitar, and so on… But that’s punk. Opposing order at every turn! That argument holds up! And on the flip side, we get a dose of genuine, raw rock energy straight from the source. The only thing missing from the selection of material is the song Ciklama, which after the band’s breakup became a regular fixture in the live repertoire of Mrle’s Let 3. The flaw with no excuse, though, is that the “live” recordings just don’t fit on this compilation. Their quality is downright dreadful, and so they undermine the “reputation” of the band that is laid out on the first 17 tracks.
However short the band’s career may have been, in that time Termiti, with their unbridled, provocative force of burning “teenagerhood” and rebellious, gushing rage, shone so brightly that their rock legacy left a mark that defies the ravages of time for good. The gnawing of Termiti at the turn of the seventies into the eighties pulled a whole phalanx of bands in its wake, which resulted in a genuine, self-generating mass movement. For the now-retired Termiti, a well-earned status of pioneers and respect, which can’t be disputed!
Lineup
Predrag Kraljević (Kralj) – vocals
Robert Tičić (Tica) – guitar
Josip Krošnjak (Pepi) – keyboards
Damir Martinović (Mrle) – bass
Berislav Dumenčić (Kiko) – drums
Production
Goran Lisica Fox
Track list
STUDIO:
1.Vjeran pas
2.Ja ne želim ništa
3.Mama, s razlogom se brineš
4.Vremenska prognoza
5.Ujo gastabajter
6.Prljava sudbina
7.Idem nestajem
8.Žaca
9.Zdravo Marijo
10.Šminkeri
11.Kišni razdraganci
12.Crossofiran
13.Pobuna
14.Nova umjetnost
15.Gibajmo se
16.Miris tamjana
17.Baš vas briga
LIVE:
18. Redukcija (Pula, ’79)
19. Ja ne želim ništa (Rijeka, ’81)
20. Komercijalna ljubav(Rijeka, ’81)
21. Igrokaz hajate(Rijeka, ’81)
22. Vjeran pas(Rijeka, ’81)
23. Miris Tamjana(Rijeka, ’81)
24. Skylab(Rijeka, ’81)
MULTIMEDIA SECTION:
Termiti – excerpt from the film “Ritam rock plemena” by Bernardin Modrić
