New Blood

Demo review by Justin Briggs from the new issue of MRR, hot off the presses, and photos stolen from Chris Strickland‘s Facebook page…

CRIATURAS — This cassette is pure, unabashed sonic perfection and we’ve been blasting this thing around my house for weeks now, non-stop. On first listen, the first thing that caught me off guard was the guitar. Its tone is crazy and flanged or something throughout, which in itself sounds crazy enough, but the leads and hidden little tickles that are thrown into the spaces between the riffs, are fucking mind blowing and are what really catapult this from being a great demo with great songs, into its own fucking orbit of great cosmic importance in my world. There is this real subtle melody in the last song, “Hay Viene la Muerte,” that makes me psyched to geek out on this kind of shit every goddamned time I hear it. It’s not really just the guitar that’s brilliant either — everything here is great, from every word of Dru’s amazing vocals to every drum hit. It’s punk, it’s hardcore, and it sounds like nothing else out there. CRIATURAS hails from Austin, TX, and some of them have been in other bands you know and probably like, but it doesn’t matter ’cause this shit is head and shoulders above almost every other release that will come out in 2010, and that’s a promise. A flawless example of everything I love about music. Period.

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