La Guerra - demo cd

A short time ago me and my band played a show which also had the band La Guerra on the bill. To be totally honest, I'd never heard of them even though they're from Rotterdam. Turns out that isn't too strange though, because they've only been around since september 1999. Before that they had been playing a couple of months as "Swat".
At a local festival one of the guys in La Guerra handed me this untitled demo-cd to review. So here goes, the one thing you notice immediately when listening this demo is the shitty soundquality. I have been given a lot of rehearsalroom-recordings lately and they all sound fucked up. I know you're proud of you band's music and can't wait to get your music out and I know, it's only a demo, but first impressions are vital! Better save some money, wait a little longer and get yourself some recording studio, dammit!
Ok, the music then: The first few seconds of the disc scared the shit out of me, it starts with some hiphop kinda intro, which luckily lasted only a few seconds. After that it's all good! Three of the four bandmembers do vocals and that adds some nice diversity. "Defeat" even starts with some real singing, but most of the time the vocals are raw and aggressive. (And there's are some evil screaming too!)
The music is a mixture between punk and hardcore with some mellower parts in there too. They sound really raw and intense. (And I admit, that's also strengthened by the harsh soundquality I mentioned before.) It's hard to name comparable bands, because of the nice mixture between all these styles. They remind me a bit of a dutch band called Slamsquad.
I can't tell you a lot about their lyrics, because they weren't included. The bandname La Guerra implies some political awareness I guess... OK, to finish this up; it's great to see there are some new enthousiastic bands emerging in Rotterdam. La Guerra has only been around for a short while and taking that into consideration this is a good demo. There are four songs on the disc and you can also listen to them on their homepage. Great first effort, and if they can get a little tighter we will hear lots more from these guys. In a couple of months they're planning to record a new full-length, so watch out for that!
Check out their homepage or contact them!