DE LA CRUZ – Street Level (2013)
The Real One – No Cuts
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DE LA CRUZ born in 2007 when Australian guitarist Casey Jones met Auckland, New Zealand based singer Roxxi Catalano, both eager to form an ’80s arena-style rock band with all the spice of that decade.
After a pleasant self-recorded EP, De La Cruz is debuting on Frontiers Records with the amazing sparkler entitled “Street Level”.
“Street Level” launches out of the starting gate with its title track, a raucous, powerful, in your face ballsy melodic ’80s style Rocker featuring rocket-fuelled extrovert drumming, solid thumping bass lines, screaming arpeggio-strewn guitars and raspy high octane vocals reminiscent of Tom Kiefer (Cinderella) and Steve Whiteman (Kix), whilst on other songs Catalano is remarkably similar to Push’s Martie Peters. As an opening statement it certainly got your attention.
The band show no mercy with follower “Girls Go Wild” having one of the hookiest chant-a-long choral arrangements I’ve heard this year. Indeed pretty much any of the dozen songs here will take you back to those US melodic Hard Rock bygone days, and thanks to a near perfect huge studio production the compositions don’t end up sounded dated.
De La Cruz show a remarkable maturity with their songwriting and arrangements with great use of dynamics such as on the glorious summery “Dreaming” with its beautiful harmony backing vocals and Martie Peters-stylised singing which probably just steals the favourite song slot for me.
There’s plenty eighties references littered all over this album as “Set The Night” reminds me of Ratt with that layered vocals and Warren de Martini’s tone on the guitars, whilst the raucous “Worlds Collide” with its great drumming has a Love/Hate feel with a ‘street attitude’.
De La Cruz really rocks with the fantastic six string drive and raspy powerhouse vocal delivery of “S.E.X.”, having a little Motley Crue element hanging around its musical core.
Then we have the punchy, heavy Dokken-infused “Invincible” and then two songs that feature multi-tracked Def Leppard style backing vocals; the Push and D.A.D. influenced driving rocker “Legions Of Love” with its wonderfully infectious chorus and “Gimme Love”, again with an amazingly catchy chorus.
So you want catchy harmonies and banging guitar licks? Well, try tracks such as “Turn It Up” and “Cherry Bomb”, these songs flourish under that eighties slant and certainly an album like this would have undoubtedly found multi platinum success back in the day.
However in the here and now this collection will still find it’s way into the hearts and minds of hair metal aficionados worldwide, because this is feelgood music to bounce around to.
Full of Dokken, Firehouse, Ratt, Icon, Def Leppard style highly infectious rockers, it’s hard to pick a favourite track on De La Cruz full length debut “Street Level”.
The musicianship is first class with Casey Jones and Rory Joy dueting in perfect harmony showing great use of dynamics whilst never overplaying the solos or being too flashy, with wonderful melodic tones that totally complement the songs.
Lacey Lane is a remarkable sticksman who is very extrovert with his playing hitting hard but with plenty of showy, and the glue holding it together is Grant Daniell, a solid unfussy bassist that allows the groove to flow creating the base for Roxxi Catalano’s vocal gymnastics to shine through.
With young bands like De La Cruz coming through it’s nice to know a younger generation will have the chance to enjoy contemporary bands playing this quality ’80s arena Hard Rock, and have their own heroes growing up.
Highly Recommended.
01. Street Level
02. Girls Go Wild
03. Turn It Up
04. Legions Of Love
05. Gimme Love
06. Cherry Bomb
07. Dreaming
08. Invincible
09. Worlds Collide
10. S.E.X.
11. Set The Night
12. Shine
Roxxi Catalano – Vox
Casey Jones – Guitar
Rory Joy – Guitar
Grant Daniell – Bass
Lacey Lane – Drums
BUY IT !
www.deepdiscount.com/cd/DE-LA-CRUZ-STREET-LEVEL
