‘No hay hogar, No hay salvacion, No hay seguridad, No conozro lo sagrado, Muerte en todo lado’ (Putrefaxion) / ‘There is no home, There is no salvation, There is no security, I do not know the sacred, Death is everywhere’ (Rotten)

Gritos Norterño (Northern Cries) is the debut album from Destruxion Amerika, a band that calls on the musicianship of members of the New York triumvirate of Kaleidoscope, Straw Man Army, and Tower 7, together with vocals from the band’s originator, also of Altar Of Eden and Nosferatu.

The drawled Spanish vocals conjure an atmosphere that brims with urgent desperation yet that is also concurrently mired in languid despondency, a compelling tension matched by the wider just shy of lo-fi battery.  The guitars are a fiercely lean fuzz.  This allows the swinging bass lines to punch through with a taut resonance in partnership with the loosely limber drums.  It is a blend perfectly embodied by the shimmering fury of Ciclos (Cycles), the bleakly infectious Fosa Comun (Mass Grave), and the enticingly choppy Humillados, No (Humiliated, No).

The result is as mesmerising as it is frenetic, burning with a sense of powerlessness and frustration at the dehumanising economics, hollowed out media, and the state sanctioned violence of an increasingly authoritarian US government.  It bleakly evokes a sense of a society rotting from the inside out, knowingly nurturing the roots of its own demise, relentlessly accelerating the path to its own self-destruction.