Summer of Hate (Bonus Track Version)

iTunes Review

That the band is named after an Echo & The Bunnymen album offers a hint as to what the Crocodiles sound like, but that’s just a starting point. After opening with 48 seconds of looped synth and feedback (“Screaming Chrome”) they jump straight into the melodic and wonderfully warbly “I Wanna Kill,” which sounds a lot cheerier than the title would suggest, and once it’s over your first instinct is to play it again. And that’s the beauty of this debut by the San Diego-based duo — they take recognizably retro ideas and swirl them into their own breed of reverb-drenched, sample-heavy fuzz rock to create something exciting and unexpectedly varied. There’s thick distortion, howling feedback, and aggression one moment (“Soft Skull,” “Refuse Angels,” “Flash of Light”), followed by trippy, spooky, and oddly soothing drones the next (“Here Comes the Sky,” “Sleeping With the Lord”). Or, in the case of the title track, both at once. The Crocodiles make young angst sound like a helluva lot of fun.