TERMINAL NATION

This is not going to be a surprise, but our nation is going to Hell in a handbasket. Politics that are not just corrupt but actively insane, traumatic climate events on the rise, gun violence out of control and a state of division akin to the Civil War period are just a few of the more obvious problems. A few months out from when I write this, we may well be in the depths of a complete fascist takeover.

For such times, TERMINAL NATION from Arkansas seems uniquely suited to be the musical accompaniment.  They do not play the music of escapism or happy times. Instead, it’s lyrically and sonically the sound of a society convulsing. On their new album “Echoes From The Devil’s Den”, TERMINAL NATION bombard the listener with merciless grindcore and blistering death metal.

Mr. Stan Liszewski is the voice of the beast. He fits the band’s sound like an iron gauntlet. He also comes up with much of the stinging lyrical attack. He was the right man to talk to to find out more about the life and times of TERMINAL NATION. Join us now…

WORMWOOD CHRONICLES: Greetings to TERMINAL NATION! I read where the release of “Echoes From The Devil’s Den” will be on the 10th anniversary of the band. Is the band still pushed and motivated by the same ideas as 10 years ago or has there been a significant change?

STAN LISZEWSKI: The band is essentially still motivated by all of the same ideals we had when we started the group. I wanted a band that was rooted in punk, aggressive, and in your face. While there has been some significant sonic evolution over the years, we are still the same TERMINAL NATION in regards to why we started the band. 

WC: What exactly is the “Devil’s Den” of the title? Is it pretty much planet Earth in the 21st century?

SL : The title does have somewhat of a double meaning. This band has never shied away from the fact that we are from Arkansas. I wanted something that incorporated where we are from as it’s a pivotal part of this band’s DNA. There is an infamous State Park in Arkansas called Devil’s Den state park, with a lot of supernatural lore. This park has been the location of many missing persons who were later found, unaware of the fact that they had even been considered missing. It’s also the site of one of the most famous alien abduction cases in UFOlogy history. It was believed for centuries that there is a hole in one of the caves that goes straight to hell, hence the name. All of that said, during the writing process of this album, our bass player Chase was suffering through a pretty severe life-altering car accident that could’ve likely ended his ability to play bass again. He has overcome much, but still deals with residual effects of that.  Also, in March of 2023, a tornado tore through the city of Little Rock, and while I survived that tornado, it did destroy my home, which also happened to be where we practice, and while we were in the midst of writing this album. It’s been over a year long battle with my homeowners insurance company and I am still displaced from my home, but during the writing process, the only part of the house that had electricity was the basement where we practiced. So we continued to write, in a house that was filled with debris, mold, broken walls, etc. Writing an album that’s so pissed off, in a setting like that, while not the most comfortable or relaxing process, certainly felt like it fit. So you could certainly say, from a personal perspective, over the last year and a half, members of this band have lived in the Devil’s Den. 

WC: This is one of the angriest records I’ve ever heard and I hear a lot of them. Is rage the only emotion you deal in or are there other colors there to be found?

SL: The album is 100% written from my perspective. I do not care if someone agrees with the messaging. I do not care if someone relates to the messaging. While this may sound very selfish, I do not write music for anyone else but myself. I simply do not care to speak metaphorically, to leave the song subject up to interpretation, or anything like that. I write about my lived experiences. I will write about what I have witnessed. I write about my take on the current affairs of the world. The world is an ugly place, a place filled with hate, a place filled with evil, a place with no sympathy. We live in an unforgiving world, and it’s a disservice, when writing about a world like this, to talk about it in any other way. There is a lot to be angry about in the world, and this record is a culmination of my thoughts and feelings about that. 

WC: On the musical side, things are of course brutally heavy, but there’s some thought in how things are structured and even melody in spots. Is this songcraft new to “Echoes From The Devil’s Den” or has it always been present in TERMINAL NATION?

SL: For this album, we had tossed around the idea of adding more structure to our music, adding more melody. I had been listening to a lot of IN FLAMES, a lot of later era CARCASS, and things like that, and while I do not consider myself a melo-death aficionado, I can appreciate a well executed melodic part, so long as it is incorporated in the right place and in the right way. For this album we collaborated with Ryan Bram as a producer, and I think that he played a pivotal role in a lot of the more standout parts of the record. We’ve worked with Ryan in a mixing capacity previously, I think he knew what we wanted to do as a band on this record, and he basically pushed us to make it happen. This band has always taken chances, that’s nothing new for us. 

However, Ryan looks at music differently than most, and when we would come up with an idea that maybe seemed like it didn’t work, and would need ot be scrapped, he pushed us to take it, and forcefully alter it so that it works, rather than just scrap it. I think TERMINAL NATION and Ryan both creatively pushed ourselves in this process, and took risks likes traditional song structure, a lot of melody, a huge instrumental, some synth tones, and things like that, which are all things that we may have flirted with as a concept, but Ryan was the devil on our shoulder telling us not only to do it, but do it in the most extreme way. I couldn’t be more proud of the final product. 

WC:  What’s the band’s songwriting process like? Do you all collaborate or is there a “general” that calls most of the shots?

SL: Our guitar player Tommy is the brains behind a lot of the infancy of the riffs and structure. Oftentimes he will write an entire catalog of songs that will work for TERMINAL NATION, present them to the group, and we will immediately start adding to it, or rebuilding what he started. So in a way, it’s both, while there is a general who come up with many of the ideas, the team ends up collectively dissecting it all. 

WC: Do you have one track on the album that maybe stands out more than the others? If so, why?

SL: With the exception of maybe the instrumental, “Embers of Humanity”, the track that stands out, while not a complete outlier, but a song with a bit more edger and swagger than the rest is “Cemetery of Imposters”. The song is a head on approach to those who live their lives on the sidelines, judge your every move, bash your every success, while you’re lapping them in the game of life. As the lyric in the song states, “I refuse to be a main character in your own story, when you’re not one in your own.” They act like they like you, or are proud of what you accomplish, but at the end of the day, they’re an Imposter, a fake, and belong with all other’s like them. In the “Cemetery of Imposters”. 

WC: I hear a lot of Swedish death metal, classic hardcore and thrash in your sound, but what are some of the influences that are maybe not so obvious?

SL: Your interpretation of the sound is pretty solid. That said, while I was displaced from my home I lived over two months in a 600 square foot hotel. As a result of the house damage, I had broken my hand. I wasn’t able to type, I wasn’t able to play video games as an escape, It was a pretty mentally dark period for me. I’ll be honest, over the last year, the amount of extremely hard metal and hardcore that I have listened to was pretty limited. Don’t get me wrong. I love music that’s spiteful and angry, however on occasion, I sometimes just seek music that’s fun. Music that’s about kicking ass and having a good time. During some of these darker months, which were some of the most difficult of my entire life, I listened to a lot of just fun old school heavy metal music. AC?DC, VAN HALEN, JUDAS PRIEST, IRON MAIDEN, DANZIG, MANOWAR, and even some hair metal. I was obsessed. I listened to a lot of that stuff, because it was an escape, it was fun, and made me feel good at a point in my life where it was hard to pinpoint positives. Those bands exist to get your adrenaline pumping. Most of their songs are about having a good time, not giving a shit, being a badass, kicking ass, and just generally, being a societal nuisance. For those same reasons, while this had a bit harder of an edge, I also took solace in a lot of old school rap. Particularly Memphis rap, since it’s so geographically close to Little Rock. Artists like THREE SIX MAFIA, GANGSTA BOO, PROJECT PAT, KOOPSTA, GANGSTA PAT, TOMMY WRIGHT III, LA CHAT, and more. I always found Memphis rap to appear to be one of the most sincere versions of the genre, a lot of it is about getting high, representing where you're from, whooping ass, and just being a straight up menace to everyone around you. What’s not to love?

WC:You have a lot of guests on “Devil’s Den” like Jesse Leach, Dwid and Todd Jones. Were they just friends who sat in or did you specifically seek them all out?

SL: We had thrown around a few names for potential guest spots early on, but only wanted to do the parts if they made sense. In a lot of ways, this record is like the culmination of what TERMINAL NATION is, we looked only specifically towards people who have influenced our musical journey at one point or another, and I’d say we got a pretty solid line up. Some of the guests we had asked, some asked us, and but everyone was excited to be apart of it, and excited to be a part of the record. Shockingly enough, all of the lyrics were written by me, and were largely approved and untouched by all the guests. 

WC: Lyrically, this is one of the harshest albums out there. Is there room for any hope in TERMINAL NATION’s songwriting or has that ship pretty much sailed? “Empire of Decay” seems to say that it has.

SL: It’s a tough topic to tackle. I think there are a lot of great people. Is it enough to turn the tide of the entire world? I’m not sure. In the last few years, I’ve been more focused on improving my local community, family, and friends. It may be near impossible to change the world, but with a small amount of effort you can certainly impact someone’s whole world and right now, that may be the closest thing to a victory in that sense that we are capable of.

WC: There are a lot of great lines in the lyrics. One of my favorites is in “Merchants of Death”...”Merchants of death/24 hr news cycle/Bet against humanity/Horror between fast food ads”. That’s so true. What are some of your favorite lines from the album?

SL: There are so many lyrics on this record I am proud of, That one included. Here is a list of a few lines that I think really stick out on the record. 

“Russian roulette with 6 fucking bullets. They put your finger on the trigger and make you pull it.”

“Merchants of bloodshed, killing from an office chair. Merchants of bloodshed profit from utter despair.”

“I refuse to make you the main character in my own story, when you aren’t in your own.”

“There is no reform for the murder of children. No amount of training curbs a killers appetite. Dorner was right. You’re the enablers. Guilty of misconduct. New age slave patrol.”

“Hostile architecture. Concrete of evil. If these bridges could talk, they’d ask “ why, go why?”. The spikes under the bridge stab right through the city’s heart. If survival’s an ‘eyesore’, I’ll put a spike through your eyes."

WC: “Dying Alive” seems to be a much more personal song than the rest. Is that driven by real experience?

SL: Yes, the song is written both from the personal perspective of surviving a tornado, but also, from trying to look at our bass player, Chase’s life and mortality. Both he and I in the last year and had some of the worst experiences of our lives, but still, the world keeps on turning. Creditors keep calling. Bills keep stacking. Work still expects you to show up. No matter how hard life gets, it’s hard to come to grip with the fact that the world does not care. It does not stop spinning to allow you to catch up. It just keeps moving.