Hot Cross

Item: Cryonics
Author: Chaz Murphy

Cryonics

(2003)

Reviewed by Chaz Murphy

Discogs Bandcamp

Label Level Plane RecordsDecapolisJune 2003

hardcore math rock post-hardcore

In February of 1999, I was able to go to a small festival at the Melody Bar in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I went to go see Zao and Stretch Arm Strong but I also got to see some other good bands as well. Atom and His Package, Buried Alive, and Good Clean Fun also played. Halfway through the festival I was able to watch a band that totally blew me away and they set the bar on how a band should put on a show. Their passion and insanity created the most amazing live show I've ever seen. They were You and I. Unfortunately, they broke up a month or so later and I was never able to see them again but through the past four years I have been collecting all of their releases. The band splintered and formed other side projects. One of them is The Assistant who I was able to see a while back and I have a recording of theirs. The other side project is Hot Cross.

"Cryonics" is Hot Cross' first full length but third release on one of my favorite labels, Level Plane. Just to put it bluntly, this album is amazing. I haven't been able to stop listening to it for two weeks now. It is a perfect mix of chaos and order. The guitar work is very similar to the guitar work in You and I but it just seems a lot more mature and tighter. It's complex and insane and mindblowing. I really don't know how to place their music into a genre. It's somewhere between what screamo missed out on and what hardcore never will be. If you took the guitar work and order of Appleseed Cast, the passion and style of you and i, and the vocals of bloodshed it would be the closest to Hot Cross that you could possibly get.

"Cryonics" is my favorite album of the year thus far and I think I have found my fix for my you and i craving. This album is just amazing. It's art. It's passionate. It's chaotic. It's tight. It's everything it needed to be to blow me away. Get This Album Today.

A+++++