Cro-Mags
Best Wishes

Since a few days ago I celebrated my first DeBirthday, I thought of dedicating myself once again to writing a little something, overcoming the absolute lack of desire that grips me about 12 months a year, but even more so in summer. This fresh review talks about "Best Wishes" by Cro-Mags, an album worthy of a review. Really. Critics (but also some fans) were divided after this album by the New Yorkers, pioneers of hardcore punk, which follows the historic "Age Of Quarrel", but only chronologically. In fact, "Best Wishes" represents a kind of experiment in mixing their hardcore/punk/hip-hop with evident metal and thrash influences. And this was much debated, perhaps more for the partial abandonment of their roots than for the work itself, which turned out to be a really good album in my opinion. Eight fast and powerful tracks like a double-barrel shot, engaging rhythms, the sounds at times almost remind (pardon the comparison) of the early Metallica, those of "Kill 'Em All", just to make it clear, thanks also to the voice of the crazy bassist Harley Flanagan, who reinvented himself as a singer for the occasion. Crazy because I just found out he was arrested a year ago for stabbing two current members of the band, without managing to kill them, before a concert at the famous CBGB. But the real Cro-Mags have nothing to do with the past 10 and more years of "quarrel" among the band members.

But let's return to the review. The album opens with "Death Camps", which immediately makes the group's choices clear: the intro is of only drums, then joined by bass and guitar, before exploding into the real rhythm. The most attentive will have noticed that this introduction was most probably picked up by Biohazard in the famous "Urban Discipline" in the self-titled album of '92, six years after this. However, "Death Camps" is more driven and there's more space for the instrumental part: the last two odd minutes are almost entirely fast and phenomenal guitar solos. While "Days Of Confusion" slips away as if nothing happened, almost incomplete, "The Only One" is almost melancholic at the start but has a splendid lyric. By the time the rhythm heats up, listeners will have already changed song, finding "Down, But Not Out": it's a great track fired up to the max, serving as a prelude to the standout piece of the album, "Crush The Demoniac", engaging and enriched by a fantastic solo not only for its technique but for the emotions it makes you feel (you can find it as a sample). After that, we find "Fugitive" (cute), "Then And Now" following the thread of "Days Of Confusion," and, closing this mini-album, "Age Of Quarrel," an evident nod to the album that brought them success, a very charged song with another drum intro, this time slower.

In summary: a great album, also possible to listen to all at once to fully grasp the (not too many) differences among the various tracks, which all last around 4-5 minutes or even less. Who knows, perhaps the Cro-Mags didn't think that any Dimitri Molotov could reappreciate their work, 27 years after its release.