Buzzline review

Sweet Cyanide
Taste It by Joshua Parsons

Have you heard of a band called Sweet Cyanide?

Chances are you haven’t. But, then again, chances are you will soon.

Since the band’s origins, which don’t even amount to a year, Sweet Cyanide has been riding a wave of upward momentum traveling so fast, it makes the Planck epoch at the birth of the universe look like the maturation rate of a cicada.

Recalling the ghosts of rockers past like David Bowie and T.Rex, Sweet Cyanide has been making a name for themselves on the streets of the Big Apple, bringing their own twist on glam to the ears of eager New Yorkers.

“I think what record companies have been doing for the past year is putting out this cookie-cutter, Top 40 stuff that doesn’t have any longevity,” says Sal Scoca, the band’s Brooklyn-accented singer. “I think there are a lot of people out there who want something real, something with some depth to it.”

The group’s self-titled debut is more of a proclamation of arrival than something meant to bend and twist the mind. No, they aren’t warping your reality like Tool, or progging the shit out of you with tales of wales like Mastodon.

No! Sweet Cyanide is keeping it fucking real and delivering a smash 10-track debut that brings the heart of sex, the glamour of Rock ‘n’ Roll and the style of the past roaring back to meet the demands of a public hungry for a resurgence of authenticity. Perhaps the simplicity can be a bit daunting sometimes, but you’re not meant to play this disc at a medium volume and be delivered an existential, mind-bending tornado of introspection. Hell, no!

You cram Sweet Cyanide into your CD player (or download the shit out of those MP3s and upload the hell out of them onto your iPod) and crank that baby until your ears are bleeding and you have the sudden desire to snort that extra line of coke and drive that minivan at an unsafe speed! And when you come home and make the maddest love to your wife and she’s asking what the hell has gotten into you, you simply respond:

“Sal sent me.”

Sweet Cyanide has a sound tailor-made for the Los Angeles music scene. With an emphasis on image almost rivaling that of the music itself, the band takes what is so great about the SoCal image and combines it with a Bronx attitude. Throw in some super catchy choruses and you have a gazpacho that is fit for grandma Baltasar.

Buzzine