DOWNLOAD: La Gritona - "Jupiter" (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: La Gritona - "Tony Alamo" (MP3)

words by Michael Hill

I lived in Boston for most of the 90's. I moved there to be with a girl; it didn't work out. At the time Helmet has just come out with Meantime, Nirvana were on their way to rock stardom and the Rollins Band had released The End of Silence. The concept that you could play "punk rock" and make money was starting to sink into a lot of people's heads at the time. In Boston, a lot of the kids that were punks and hardcore kids in the 80's had graduated high school, went to college and started dabbling in rock music. Suddenly people were growing their hair longer, tuning lower and digging up Master of Reality.

It was amidst all of this that I discovered Suicide King, who would later become the band La Gritona. During this short-lived era, only three of the four that would assemble as La Gritona were present: Thos Niles (drums), Colins Burns (vocals) and (current Keelhaul member) Dana Embrose (guitar), the rest of the lineup were comprised of ex-members of Eye for an Eye: Kevin Norton and Dean Baltulonis. There was a club called Bill's Bar in Boston that used to have shows every Tuesday night, usually three band bills and all locals. It was fun, and I got to see a lot of really good bands like Suicide King. I recognized the singer from a band called Slaughter Shack that had won the WBCN Rock 'n' Roll Rumble several years earlier.

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