By Nick Carrabine
NCarrabine@News-Herald.com

Although I thought it very well could have been, the debut record from Terrible Things isn’t terrible.

Terrible Things — who were initially named Initials before changing to their current name earlier this year— is made up of former Taking Back Sunday guitarist Fred Mascherino, former Hot Rod Circuit guitarist and vocalist Andy Jackson and former Coheed and Cambria drummer Josh Eppard. Three guys who have already had some pretty decent success before joining together.

However, upon hearing about Terrible Things, I had low expectations. Why?

I liked Mascherino in TBS. He’s a good guitarist and an OK vocalist but after he left TBS, he released a solo album that was half-brilliant, half-boring to death. The first half was incredible but I don’t like a single song on the album’s second half, which makes it hard for me to take it off the shelf.

Although I have one Hot Rod Circuit CD and two Coheed and Cambria CDs, if someone pointed a gun to my head and demanded an answer as to whether or not I considered myself a fan of either band, I’d say no in a heartbeat. If I never heard one song from either one of those bands again, I wouldn’t lose a second of sleep.

I also didn’t know who was going to be considered the lead singer seeing as Mascherino was a back-up vocalist with TBS and Jackson was a lead singer with his former band. If it were the latter, I almost certainly wouldn’t be interested in Terrible Things.

Luckily, Mascherino sings lead on nine of the 12 tracks (nine of 11 really, seeing as the album’s first track is an instrumental).

So, yeah, back to the album.

The good news is Terrible Things aren’t trying to re-create any of their older work. It doesn’t sound anything like any of the member’s previous bands (with exception to a 15 second guitar riff on “Lullaby” that is exactly the same as Taking Back Sunday’s “Little Devotional,” which I assume is intentional)

With that said, the band isn’t exactly re-inventing the wheel either, which is fine. It stands as a nice, solid pop-rock record that isn’t trying to be too over the top or be anything it’s not.

If anything, Terrible Things sound like a poor man’s Foo Fighters, which I consider to be a compliment as the Foo have been one of the better bands of the past 15 years.

If you were a fan of Mascherino beforehand, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy Terrible Things. This album should also serve more successful as The Color Fred project as well as any Hot Rod Circuit album ever released as Terrible Things have found a major label and have already built quite a following during the past seven months in which it took to create this album.