Gritos de Alerta / Krush, split 7″

Gritos de Alerta (Brazil) takes side A and cranks out four quick tracks of burly crust punk with plenty of speed, gruff vocals mixed with blistering screams, etc. Their style is pretty typical, but their songwriting is really energetic and offers up a great balance of fast chord progressions and heavier breakdowns, occasionally tossing in a hint of dissonance for added variety, but never really flirting with actual metal or anything like that. The recording is somewhat noisy, but there’s definitely a lot of density involved so they pull it off well and you can still get a feel for what they have to offer. Lyrically the songs deal with struggles for peace and freedom and the fucked up state of the world, with the lyrics appearing in both Portuguese and English. Krush (Holland) follows with six tracks in a similar vein, but taking a little more of a grind approach to blasting speed and harsh vocal tradeoffs between lower shouts and cackling sneers. The drumming is super tight and stands out a lot, while the recording kind of lets the guitars and bass sink back behind the vocals and drums at times. The bass tone is really solid though, so despite being a little dirty and unbalanced I think it works. I’ve never been much of a fan of that over the top screaming style, and I do find it to be somewhat distracting here, but it’s not a big deal. The lyrics are pretty blunt and deal with socio-political topics like violence, the media, consumerism and consumption, etc. The record comes in a black and white sleeve with photos on the covers and shitloads of wild collaged imagery and illustrations inside alongside the lyrics and whatnot – actually making the inner sleeve stand out more than the cover. This is a solid split, but Gritos de Alerta wins it for me. Krush is pretty good but doesn’t quite harness as much force in the writing department, though with slightly more robust or clear recordings I think both of these bands could come across more forcefully. Not too shabby. (6/10)