Santa Cruz – Santa Cruz
Release Date: March 10, 2015
Label: Spinefarm Records
Santa Cruz is a glam band from Helsinki. I’m sure you just read that and thought to yourself, “Well that makes a lot of fucking sense.” Santa Cruz is a band that is creating a lot of buzz right now in the metal world and I have to say that my interest was piqued solely based on the fact that they are a self-proclaimed glam band in the year 2015. The album opens with “Bonafide Heroes” and right away I wanted to fucking hate it. It was so melodic, it was so perfectly produced, had great guitars, melodic catchy songs, a singer who can sing his ass off and huge ass “arena style” rock backing vocals. Ok, who am I kidding? I fucking loved it.
I grew up listening to metal of all kinds and Santa Cruz is doing something really cool. Santa Cruz embodies that kind of heaviness that Skid Row brought into the scene while sounding modernly relevant enough to not sound like a dated throwback band. With songs like “Velvet Rope”, “My Remedy” and “We are the Ones To Fall”, Santa Cruz has taken an old school glam rock attitude and mentality and matched it with a much more technical style of playing that makes it heavier than the usual glam while still maintaining the vibe and spirit of glam rock past. This is the kind of music that late era glam bands were doing but they were too late to the dance. In a nutshell, Santa Cruz reminds of what Slik Toxik was doing back in ’92 and also what Taking Dawn was attempting to do in 2010 or so but failed miserably at.
Santa Cruz has the songs, the chops and their hearts are in the right place. I can’t tell you the last time I heard a band use the work “fuck” so much that I couldn’t keep count but fuck it. This is a really fun album to listen to but I don’t see this being something that I would consider a go to album. Much like the bands that inspired them, it’s the kind of music that I could see being a kick ass party soundtrack or music to get your work out on to. I’d really, more than anything, like to see if these guys can pull this sound off live and by live I mean WITHOUT backing tapes. All in all Santa Cruz is a fun band that I really enjoyed listening to and they are a band that I will definitely be keeping my eye on.
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