California-based trio Terry Malts began in late 2009 when three members of the Smiths-influenced indie pop quintet Magic Bullets conceived the band as a side project. Guitarist/vocalist Corey Cunningham, bassist/lead vocalist Phil Benson, and drummer/vocalist Nathan Sweatt eventually opted to concentrate on Terry Malts full-time, and Magic Bullets disbanded. Self-classified as "chainsaw pop," the group follows in lines drawn by classic fuzz-pop institutions like the Ramones and Jesus and Mary Chain, pop-punk roots like the Descendents and Hüsker Dü, and the reverb-coated stable of late-2000s Slumberland Records bedroom pop. The band's first recorded outing was a six-song cassette on Loglady Records in 2010, followed the next year by two 7" singles on Slumberland. In the following years, the band played sporadic gigs in the Bay Area and did several beer-soaked tours up and down the West Coast. Their first full-length album, Killing Time, was released in 2012. They returned in 2013 with their cheekily titled sophomore album, Nobody Realizes This Is Nowhere. They followed in 2014 with the Insides EP, a four-song 7" that zoomed by in just over eight minutes. After taking a year to write new songs for their next album, the trio decamped to Monte Vallier's San Francisco studio to record. It was their first time in a studio and the cleaned-up sound fit the music they were making. They turned down the guitars, applied more care to the arrangements, and drew inspiration from '70s power pop artists like the Records and Dwight Twilley. Their third album, Lost at the Party, was released in October of 2016 by Slumberland. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi