Hosts: Neil & Chris

Recording on Neil's birthday in sunny Glastonbury weekend weather that feels decidedly un-rock and roll, the hosts eventually remember they're here to discuss Terrorvision's 1993 debut Formaldehyde after an expertly chaotic 40-minute warm-up covering heated car seats, Stanley cups, and why heavy metal fans hate Download Festival. This Bradford four-piece released what might be the most authentic, un-compressed British hard rock album of the grunge era, a record that charted at 75 and became a 550-quid collector's item despite nobody outside Yorkshire really noticing.

The album arrived twice, first as the Total Vegas limited edition in December 1992 with 1,000 CDs, 500 vinyls, and a 24-page photo book, then via EMI in May 1993 after being trimmed from 14 to 12 tracks by a man in a suit. Recorded at The Chapel in Lincolnshire for what bassist Lee Marklew described as "no plan B, it's either this or nothing," Formaldehyde captured a band learning their instruments while writing songs, mixing Faith No More and Red Hot Chili Peppers influences through a distinctly Northern lens. The Yorkshire accent bleeds through the vocals in the best possible way, and the production by Pat Grogan refuses to compress the life out of anything, leaving space and dynamics that feel wonderfully out of step with the mid-90s loudness wars closing in around them.

Neil gravitates toward American TV and New Policy One for their big hooks and skippy-skip appeal, while Chris champions the songy ones, Killing Time and especially Desolation Town with its crunchy harmonica from Nick Roberts that wouldn't feel out of place on a Doors record. The album showcases Tony Wright's top-line writing ability, hooks that would only get bolder on Perseverance and even Tequila, embedded in arrangements that feel upbeat and energetic even when lyrics get dark. The production walks a fascinating line, bright and clinical and glary without the thick American compression that defined Morning Glory or Definitely Maybe, sparse and trashy like somebody recorded it five years earlier in the late 80s when dynamic range still mattered.

The Bradford accent comes through strongest on certain tracks, an authenticity marker alongside the palpable sense that these four mates are all in the same room making decisions at 3am in the studio rather than layering parts separately like Pink Floyd's increasingly distant approach. Chris notes you can hear when bands aren't getting on versus when they're genuinely together, and Formaldehyde lands firmly in the latter camp despite the usual band politics of loving each other some days and not others. The thermionic culture vulture discussion tangent reveals how even "pure" studio recordings get processed through analog distortion to sound pleasing, a reminder that audiophile notions of purity miss the point entirely when your expensive hi-fi isn't recreating what the studio sounded like but rather what sounds good to human ears.

Formaldehyde represents British hard rock before the suits fully took over, an album that charted at 75 but went gold anyway (300k sales) through word-of-mouth and touring, the old-fashioned way of building an audience in pubs where people sing along and have a giggle. Critics loved it immediately, with All Music praising "upbeat pop fused with rock funk and thrash" (despite there being no thrash whatsoever), and Encyclopedia of Popular Music calling it "a strong debut from one of Britain's most promising rock bands." Released against Nirvana's In Utero, Pearl Jam's Vs., Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, and REM's Automatic for the People, it's no wonder this localized Bradford phenomenon didn't break internationally, the epicenter diminishing with every mile traveled from Yorkshire.

The production philosophy matters because Pat Grogan and Gil Norton refused to wind up the compressors the way What's the Story Morning Glory would the following years, leaving dynamic range and quiet bits alongside loud bits, an increasingly rare approach as the decade progressed toward saturated CDs designed for Radio 1 airplay. By preserving that early-90s edge, Formaldehyde sounds refreshingly alive compared to the square-block waveforms dominating 1996-1998 releases. The band's hands-on approach to every production decision, their refusal to just turn up and play, and Lee Marklew's "no plan B" commitment created something authentic that resonates decades later. While Terrorvision became Channel 4 darlings by the Tequila era, this debut captures them before that polish, just four Bradford lads with big hooks, limited compression, and absolutely no plan except making it work.

Perfect for: Fans of pre-polished British rock who want authenticity over production sheen, producers studying what minimal compression sounds like in practice, anyone who remembers when Yorkshire accents bled through vocals in the best way, collectors hunting £550 Total Vegas pressings at car boot sales, people who toured with Motorhead and survived to tell the tale, supporters of the "either this or nothing" school of creative commitment, believers that 1993 American TV genuinely was better than British offerings, and festival toilet design enthusiasts who want Neil to interview the Sunday Times expert about mathematical models predicting Download Festival wee pools.