A SNEAK PIQUE INSIDE THE MIND OF SILAS BURROUGHS HALL OF TERANTULA
ter·an·tu·la (te-ran-too-lluh)
noun. A trio of 18-year-olds from the Midwest. Also: one kid with a MacBook, a copy of GarageBand, and enough impatience to press “export” before anyone can talk him out of it.
There’s something almost unfair about youth when it collides with conviction. The members of Terantula are barely old enough to have bad habits legally, but their debut already carries the bruised, self-inflicted mythology of a band that’s survived something. And yet here’s the twist: the record wasn’t carved out of some communal rehearsal-space exorcism. It was built alone.
Silas — the self-appointed architect, demolition crew, and emotional first responder behind Terantula — wrote and recorded ‘Jolly Chimp’ entirely by himself. Guitars modeled through ToneX, bass run DI, drums programmed with GarageBand’s built-ins. All of it tracked onto a MacBook over the span of a month. No studio clock ticking. No seasoned producer hovering. Just impatience and instinct.
“Pretty immediately,” Hall says when asked when it stopped being a hobby. “I’ve always known I was an artist, and once I started writing my own songs I knew it was my calling.”
That kind of certainty at 18 either makes you insufferable or dangerous. Hall leans toward the latter.
“The main thing I hear is that we just want to be Nirvana. I understand the comparison, but that’s not exactly what we’re going for. Nirvana is obviously a huge influence on us, but we’re not interested in mimicry.”
On the record, there’s a phrase that echoes a deep cut from Silverchair’s Freak Show — “addiction has held you back.” In Silverchair’s universe, It lands less as homage and more as confession. When asked what emotions show up most in his songwriting, he doesn’t blink.
“Melancholy and anger. Whether it be from heartbreak or addiction, those are the feelings that tend to show up the most.”
The lyric doesn’t feel lifted. It feels inherited. Like a hand-me-down jacket that still smells like smoke.
Terantula is officially a trio of 18-year-olds — a band in the traditional sense — but the album itself is a solitary document. Every guitar line, every bass run, every programmed drum fill was written and tracked by Hall.
“Lyrics are always very last, often times right before recording the song.”
No metaphoric labyrinth. No ornate poetry. “I wear my emotions on my sleeves and I’m no poet,” he says. “Nothing is off limits.”
“Everything we have released was originally intended to be the demos. I just got too impatient (and broke) to record proper studio versions.”
So what should someone feel when they discover Terantula for the first time?
“Like they got robbed. They could’ve spent their time listening to Puddle of Mudd but instead they got these twinks. #ihateterantula.”
Behind the sarcasm is a kid who knows exactly what he’s doing, even if he pretends otherwise.