Reviews

Cryptid I Exist demo cassette

Crusty noise punk blitz from a foursome who appear to have hooked up in Melbourne and at least partly dispersed since: Kyle from SHEER MAG, drumming here, was pandemically confined to Oz but has returned to Philadelphia. Not sure where vocalist JonCon (also of ZODIAK) lives, either. So you may or may not see CRYPTID live any time soon, but their demo is rad—chaotic, sure, and pretty thrashin’ fast for a noise-not-music band, but fully holding itself together with a nail-hard rhythmic frame as all sort of swirling psychedelic gloop enters the fray. This was also released, just prior to the tape versions, as a cool looking lathe-cut on the Winter Garden label, which you are way late to get a copy of, but comes with this apology from the label guy for potential bad sound quality: “my dog Ruben bumped the gain up without my knowledge so some of them are flooded with distortion.” He means an actual dog, as opposed to his friend trying to help out in the studio.