Dan Terminus just dropped the synthwave album of 2020

It was in 2017 that I first heard about Dan Terminus – I gave his excellent album, Automated Refrains, an 8/10 in Metal Hammer, its mixture of pulsating synthwave and epic, cheesy, 80s melodrama hitting the spot in a year that had already seen big releases from peers like Carpenter Brut and Perturbator. Plus, it had panpipes. What’s not to like?

Fast-forward three years and Dan has unveiled his latest album, Last Call For All Passengers, and while it comes on a day stacked with exciting new releases from the likes of Deftones, Svalbard, The Ocean and many more, it’d be a travesty if this one flew under the radar.

For a start, it’s clear from even a cursory glance and listen that Last Call... is a somewhat different beast from its predecessors. Its nightmarish artwork, featuring ghostly steeds galloping through shadowy visages of grey and green, is a far cry from the proggish, technicolour visions adorning Dan’s previous works. Musically, it also delves into darker, heavier waters than before. Opener Oubilette sounds like a bad acid trip into an abandoned TRON sequel, the drums placed higher in the mix to create an urgent, driving beat that pick-axes straight into your cranium. Requiem, meanwhile, sounds like latter day Prodigy reimagined by John Carpenter.

Multitude sounds like an 80s rave at the end of the world, while the thumping groove on Ruins owes plenty to the big beat dance acts of the 90s. Abattoir clamps crunching guitar tones over swathes of dreamy synth, a perfect mish-mash of moods that encapsulates why synthwave has found so much love in both metal and dance culture. By the time Excalibur brings us home in a pumping clash of drums and synth, it feels like we’ve come out of a particularly brutalising go inside Ready Player One. And you’ll be ready to do it all over again. In fact, it’s so good, I can’t even bemoan the fact it’s missing panpipes.

Merlin was promoted to Executive Editor of Louder in early 2022, following over ten years working at Metal Hammer. While there, he served as Online Editor and Deputy Editor, before being promoted to Editor in 2016. Before joining Metal Hammer, Merlin worked as Associate Editor at Terrorizer Magazine and has written for Classic Rock, Rock Sound, eFestivals and others. Across his career he has interviewed legends including Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, Metallica, Iron Maiden (including getting a trip on Ed Force One courtesy of Bruce Dickinson), Guns N' Roses, KISS, Slipknot, System Of A Down and Meat Loaf. He has also presented and produced the Metal Hammer Podcast, presented the Metal Hammer Radio Show and is probably responsible for 90% of all nu metal-related content making it onto the site.