Kings of Culo CD/LP
Review By Razorcake #29
This is such a hard fucking band to describe. I could say they take all the compressed weirdness of No Means No and mix it with the trashy, fucked up rock and roll of the Motards, but that doesn't really seem to fit. I could also say that, when I first heard the term "powerviolence," this is what I hoped it would sound like, but that's not gonna help anybody either. So I'm about to just give up trying to describe this record because every second that I spend typing is one less second that I'll be able to spend playing air drums. All I can say is that I didn't know if they could top "Mongolita Chronicles" but they did, and if you like spastic, weird, impossibly catchy punk bands like Toys That Kill, The Bananas, and Fleshies, you should just weld your CD player shut with this inside it. - Josh
Review By Rise & Fall of the Harbor Area Zine #7
You gotta love the sound of these guys. Just fuckin' rock. It's like I'm a geologist. I can't get away from all the rock. Shoot, I could be running around on 3rd and Mesa, totally rockin'. Anyways. These dudes are money. You pay money to get rock. Enough. No! I need more rock! All you have to do is look at the album cover and know that books are read by the cover. Actually these dudes do rock, so dig it. That would be mining. At keast you know when they talok about being 'Kings of Culo' you know its not just a joke about crack, but rock! - Pedro Bob
Review By Ox-Fanzine #63
Hier ist drei Schnurrbart-Asis aus Tucson, Arizona wohl die graue Grütze unterm Cowboyhut zu heiß geworden. Ich möchte einfach folgende Songtitel Bände sprechen lassen: "Atta boy cowboy", "To my niggaz in the south" und "Undercover nugger". Musikalisch erinnert das Trio ganz stark an die guten alten SCARED OF CHAKA, vom Aussehen her lassen sie TURBONEGRO alt aussehen, textlich mal ganz zu schweigen. So, wer noch nicht überzeugt ist, geht noch im Internet Probehören und schlägt dann zu. Ich habe schnell zugeschlagen und mir das lila marmorierte Vinyl gesichert. (08/10) (Paul Tackenberg)
Review By Neu Futur 07 October 2005
The speed in which the Swing Ding Amigos start off “Pinokiak” is an immediate system shock for those who just look at the disc and see three country-looking motherfuckers. For those who are actually into the band, this is an immediate epi-pen to the heart, something that really stoked the fires before the band starts to move back to a seventies-rock sound with “Atta Boy Cowboy”. However chaotic the tracks on “Kings of Culo” may be, the fact is that the Amigos are masters of creating catchy harmony out of seemingly nothing. There are threads in both of the first few tracks on the disc that will effect listeners emotionally even if the exterior proves gruff.
When each of the track is lucky to break the two-minute mark, there is little time for long, drawn-out openings and artistic constructs. This urgency really forces listeners to be on their toes and ready to convulse at the drop of a hat. There is not the typical amount of filler on this disc, as the band simply allows the groove that they have created to burn out; to beat a dead horse is not in the Amigos’ nature (even if their hats might say otherwise). While the aural similarity between tracks is present (listen to the opening to “Akurrukame” and “Ninak Attacks” for what I mean, the fact is that each one of these tracks is just another puzzle pieces into the diverse web of influences that really fuel the band. There are hints of Boston, Kiss, UFO, and even Refused and Agnostic Front strewn throughout “Kings of Culo”, and it is perhaps this piecemeal sound that is so compelling.
While the lyrics come into some form of audible legibility only a few times during the disc (Voltron is a key example), the fact is that it may just be a good thing that individuals can’t usually understand the band (from Pinokiak; “The bathroom door is locked, it’s shut. I sit around for what seems like hours”). Anyways, the rap-style of the lyrics for “To My Niggas in the South” work perfect with the Thin Lizzy / Gluecifer crunch; only a band as off-the-wall and intense as the Swing Ding Amigos would be able to pull this off without a note of irony anywhere on the disc. Less than a half-hour, the tracks on “Kings of Culo” will blast past a listener in what will feel like a blink of an eye; strong, spastic and over-the-top, this is what music needs now.
Top Tracks: Sweet Pill, To My Niggas in the South
Review By Scanner Zine
Already, another 14-track hard-hitter follows the release above! It's an album similar, and just as impressive as that above but maybe a tad more focussed, bringing to mind an early ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT vibe; certainly in terms of all-out rockin' action. It's still a wild ride as the likes of 'Voltron' and 'Tiger Skin' and the pummelling, insistent 'Sweet Pill' prove. I can't think of another band doing this wigged-out, wired, frenetic, fun and furious Garage Punk with such startling efficiency as the mighty SWING DING AMIGOS. Use that as your reference and ignore this band at your peril!
Review By Impact Press
The hilarity of this three-piece Mexican look-alike punk outfit out of Arizona is overshadowed at times by the hard-edged riffs, and even harder attitudes, on a release that's bound to rock your balls right out of your scrotum. This disc is so surprisingly good, that it doesn't matter that half of it is in Spanish, because the tight rocking grooves come across effortlessly. Drugs, sex and booze are on the menu, and don't forget about the humor, such as in the opening track about needing to take a shit. Other standout tracks include "To My Niggaz in the South," "R is for Nighttrain" and "Undercover Nugger." (JC)
Review By Used Wigs
This Tuscon, Arizona band kicks some major ass here with plenty of adrenaline-inducing punk rock and roll. It's fast, furious and unbridled, everything that rock music should be. At times they remind me of the Replacements during their most ferocious (i.e., the "Stink" era.) Swing Ding Amigos prove that bands are still capable of creating their own home brew of wickedly clever punk rock that is anything but derivative.
Mongolita Chronicles CD
Review By Lowcut Magazine
FUCK ME! This album is completely spazzed out faster-than-fast punkrock’n’roll, 22 blasts of berserker amphetamine rawk in less than 24 minutes! Fortunately these wacky kids are excellent musicians so it’s never gets outta control since they’re tighter than as nun’s rectum. The bassplayer is a nutjob, and the crazy lyrics are both in English and Spanish. Sometimes they bring the pace down and dish out a song like ”Gargamel” which echoes vintage Hüsker Dü (only better!) while other songs sound like MC5 is being sodomized by Zeke! Swing Ding Amigos hails from, Tucson, Arizona, and I bet these muchachos are a fuckin’ riot live!! Their new album, "Kings Of Culo" should be out soon on Recess Records.
Review By Ox-Fanzine #63
Tucson, Arizona: drei Kids, die sich zuviel Speed und Klebstoff durch die Nase gezogen haben, und denen die Wüstensonne allzu sehr das Hirn geröstet hat, klauen der örtlichen Stoner-Rockcombo das Gras und die Instrumente und prügeln ein Album ein. Das könnte wohl die Vorgeschichte zu den (bereits drei Jahre alten) Aufnahmen dieser Scheibe sein. Unglaublich furiose 22 Songs in weniger als 24 Minuten, total hektisch und übersteuert dargeboten und teilweise auch auf Spanisch gesungen. Ein Song wie "Nyquil" hätte auch problemlos auf der "Destroy Oh Boy!" LP der NEW BOMB TURKS erscheinen können, während "Gargamel" an die besten Momente von SCARED OF CHAKA erinnert. Und wenn man die beiden eben genannten Bands in einen Kübel von überkochendem straightem Punkrock, weirdem Garagensound, wildem Frühachtziger-Hardcore und jugendlichem Wahnsinn wirft, könnte man dem Gesamtsound der SWING DING AMIGOS schon recht nahe kommen. Obwohl: genau fassbar sind sie nicht wirklich ... Das hier ist der unglaublich intensive Soundtrack für einen ausgedehnten Epilepsieanfall oder um sich mal spaßeshalber 24 Minuten lang den Kopf gegen die Wand zu schlagen. Werd' ich jetzt auch wieder machen ... (09/10) (Bernd Fischer)
Review By Dirt Culture
I'm always interested in anything non hip-hop to come out of Tucson, because although I don't really like the city itself and it pretty much smells like a sewer year-round, there have always been great bands to come out of the area, and this tradition continues with Swing Ding Amigos. THE MONGOLITA CHRONICLES is 22 mostly around a minute tunes of The Hives meets Zeke garagey punk rawk mayhem. A sure toe-tapper at the very least, but if you've got any real sense of appreciation for good rock and roll, this one'll dig deep into yer soul and bring you hours, if not days or weeks, of pleasure. Mmmm, Amogoooos. (GawdamAdam Van Sodom)
Review By Savage Magazine January 2006
From the strange name to the even more confusing sleeve to music that ranges from good, fast punkrock to hardcore to melodic punk to heavier stuff this band confuses the hell outta me. What were they thinking? Cause I mean some of this stuff ig pretty good.. and some of it is unlistenable. - Thomas
Review By Scanner Zine
Shit! The 7" above promised a lot… but surely not this much frenetic, fuzzed-to-fuck chaos!! This features 22-tracks that fly past in under 24 minutes and throttle the listener with the ferocity of a rampaging serial killer hitting his 21st victim. Think of the crazed melodic genius of TOYS THAT KILL being intravenously injected into FLESHIES while laced with the snotty Punk attack of SAFETY PINS and playing that is sooo hard it would give ARTICLES OF FAITH a run for their money. THEN, put it in a liquidiser, play through a fuzz box and you'll have an idea of the wild noise created here. It does get a bit TOO crazed at times - such as the vocals on 'Hey Genie' and 'Tuba'. 'Gargamel' steals the DEAD BOYS' 'Sonic Reducer' riff and doesn't even try to hide it while 'Mochate Momia' and 'Tyrant In The Tanga' both slay. Great, fucked-up Punk scuz Rock. Good Charlotte fans be afraid - be very, very afraid!
Review By Razorcake Magazine
The Amigos smack you around like a crack bitch with twenty tracks, most of all clocking in at under a minute and a half. Being a trio, these guys have got their shit together. Tight, yet loose, a la Toys That Kill. This disc is a big-ass wall of raw, bleeding rawk that sounds like what Minor Threat would have sounded like if they took to emptying cases of beer and fifths of booze in their spare time. The Amigos would have been a repeat opening band for Black Flag, but lucky you, you get to see the Amigos next time you get a chance. Don't blow it. - Designated Dale
Review By Carbon 14
This is the real deal, kids. The real deal when it comes to
completely off-the-wall punk that'll have you double-taking and
thinking, 'What the fuck IS this?!' With 22 tracks that fly by in a hair
under 24 minutes, this is the musical equivalent of Short Attention
Span Theater. The Amigos keep their feet awash in basic punk but
there are flourishes of everything from proto-desert rock (like the
late, great Colorado band The Emirs) to Bad Brains-inspired
hardcore to keep you on your toes and keep surprising you at just
about every turn. And did I mention they're bi? Bi-lingual that is;
throwing down two songs in Spanish (actually one flips back and
forth between Spanish and English), and they do it so seamlessly
you probably won't catch it the first time around unless you're
checking out the lyrics. This CD was actually recorded three years
ago but the band is so much more interested in playing than
releasing records that until now they hadn't slowed down enough
since recording it to release it! In the words of Tito Santana, 'Arriba!' -Larry; carbon 14 #26
Review By Punk Planet
The band's name, album title, and cover artwork are down-right confounding.
Much easier to figure out is that this shit rocks. This Tucson trio plays raw,
lightning-fast punk rock with sharp hooks and catchy vocal melodies that
bring to mind (former) fellow desert-dwellers Scared of Chaka. This is crazy
good. (JC) - Punk Planet
Review By Tucson Weekly
While we're on the topic of excellent Tucson punk bands, let's discuss Swing Ding Amigos, shall we? The trio will hold a release party this weekend for their second album, whether or not they actually have the CDs and LPs back from the label by the time of the show. If necessary, Isaac has promised to burn CD-Rs to sell at the gig, then swap 'em out for the genuine article once they arrive. (Because we were given an unmastered CD-R of a vinyl test pressing, we find ourselves without an album title, though we can tell you the band's new label is Recess--same as Shark Pants, with whom they share a member.) Unfortunately, we got our hands on a copy at the last hour before deadline, so we haven't had a whole lot of time to spend with it, but here are our first impressions.
Where debut The Mongolita Chronicles (Rock N Roll Purgatory) boasted 22 bilingual tracks of mostly speedy, short punk stabs that subtly integrated slightly quirky tendencies and '70s rock riffs, on it, the Amigos came off without sounding like one of those bands that tries too hard to be different--they just were. And best of all, like all the great current Tucson punk bands, they proved they know their way around a memorable melody. The follow-up comprises 14 songs that mine much of the same territory, but--and keep it mind we're going on first impressions of a crappy sounding copy--the songs don't jump out as instantly as those on the debut. It's still far better than most of what passes for punk these days, but we were hoping for a leap forward of sorts, or at least hooks to rival those on Chronicles. To be fair, it sounds way better on second listen than it did on the first, so maybe those hooks will reveal themselves over time. With an asterisk: a slight disappointment, but still completely recommended.
Review By Splendid E-Zine
Sex in cars. Sex with minors. Drunken sex. Over-the-counter drug sex.
Groupie sex. The usual topics dominate this supercharged, superdistorted
garage-punk opus, wherein the standard quartet of barely legal boys use
dirty riffs to try to attract dirty girls for dirty acts in (most likely)
dirt-encrusted back seats. Actually, "Nyquil"'s lyrics pretty much say it
all: "Don't give a fuck cause she's my baby tonight / Underage girl in a car
that's stolen / Three little cups and her panties are rolling." Very nice.
The quality of the music is so-so, furiously energetic but lacking focus,
and impeded by AM-radio-in-the-desert standards of audio fidelity. Some of
the songs are in Spanish, reflecting the band's Nogales, AZ upbringing, but
except for the lack of politics, the vibe is pure So-Cal hardcore. The
drummer is quite impressive in a brutal, pushed to eleven kind of way, and
some of the guitar riffs ("0-2-60" "Caligula") make head-banging sense. The
songs are mostly very short -- eight of them under a minute and only one
over two -- compressed and ADD-ish, as if the band had barely discovered a
riff or a chorus that excited them before it became boring. The result is a
sort of firehose spew of furious rock energy, harsh and undifferentiated and
ultimately kind of dull. The one exception is "Gargamel", a minute and a
half of nearly melodic garage punk that rises like an oasis out of the noise
and fury. - Jennifer Kelly
Review By Rocktober
Some rocking punk bands deliver the nasty goods so purely and so ugly that they are freaking awesome. Well this band is fucking awesome, which is way better. Made my swing ding!
Review By Horizontal Action
Surprise! I liked this. They play super fast, weird, sloppy rock that really vaguely reminds me of NEW BOMB TURKS and SCARED OF CHAKA at times. Really, really vaguely. Twenty two songs and the longest clocks in at 2 minutes, 5 seconds, and several are at the 40 second mark. I bet this band is great live. I'm to track 15 now, and I thought it would get old but its getting better and better. Aw yeah. But that band name has gotta go. (Norah)
Review By Odyssey Zine
Don't let the weird name put you off (I was really worried that I'd start
hearing some rockabilly or swing music whenI put this on). The disc is
crammed with super wild, ultra-hyper guitar fury. It's fierce and fast, with
nary a moment to take a breath. It seems like it takes five minutes before
you get seven songs into this record. Its many charms vary wildly from song
to song, but it's LOUD the whole way through. One second you're listening to
spastic, unintelligible, static blasts of punk rock, and then you hear a
little pop riff to screw with your head a bit. It's a schizophrenic good
time. Even the songs that you don't like at first will usually win you over
by the end. I don't get sick of hearing "Tik-Tok," a jerky, frantic punk
song that sounds like the lyrics could be in French but they probably
aren't. Give this one a chance for sure.
Review By Left Off The Dial
Tucson, Arizona seems to be a sun burnt hotbed for fierce, snot-nosed rock
'n' roll these days - with bands such as the Supersuckers growing up there
and youngens the Knockout Pills staggering through the heat. Now, unearthed,
come the Swing Ding Amigos offering up a piece of their own blistering past.
At first I was extremely excited to hear a new band with newly recorded
material sound so fresh and energetic; it seems a bit rare today. I
remembered noticing ads for a new CD/LP in some of my geek mags, so I went
back to consult the short, concise press sheet. Sure enough, to my chagrin,
it's explained this was actually recorded three or four years ago - so why
so long coming? This album was released this past year on Rock N Roll
Purgatory, and their newest is out on Recess Records (Kings of Culo); I will
be tracking down a copy for myself.
On the first spin, I'm hooked and leaning into my stereo. This is sweltering
amphetamine-soaked rock. By the time the third track rolls around and I look
up to the display, I haven't even noticed that we've already left two tracks
far behind in the dust. One track just rear-ends the next at breakneck,
speed splintering into clouds of spittin' and fightin'. The Swing Ding
Amigos have managed to find and record a sound as fast and forceful as an
early hardcore album, but maintain a more rock structure (more fretboard
flyin' than three chord madness). I can honestly say I have not reviewed
such a youthful, energetic album in a long while. The Mongolita Chronicles
is a beautiful hybrid of punk, garage and 80s hardcore spirit. Focusing on
plain, dirty fun with a smart-ass attitude, these three hotheaded Arizonians
leave behind over-indulgent rock soloing, arty stop and start pauses and
pretentious lyrics and present to us straight to the point, gut-driven, gone
for the throat rock fury. Clocking in twenty-two tracks at a speed of
twenty-three minutes and fifty-one seconds, the album hauls to a finish as
quickly as it started, leaving me rattled and smiling. This is punk rock for
the attention-impaired, and I am a fan. - Chaz Martenstein
Review By Terminal Boredom
Three piece outfit hailing from the desert land of Tucson, Arizona, where I imagine there ain't too much happenin'.I had my reservations going in, and it's pretty rawk-ish affair, but the sub-two minute blasts of songs fly by quick enough so you don't get any on you. Reminiscent of RFTC if they dropped the horn section and replaced it with a stoner rock fetish (and not Electric Wizard style plod-stoner, but heavy fuzz moving stoner like early Fu Manchu or Unida or Beaver). Best song title: "They Raped Hades". Worst song title: either "Gargamel" or "The Smurf", pick one. Twenty-two tracks in all, taking up somewhere just over a half-hour, with that weirdo-desert vibe poured all over them and garnished with some humor and Spanish. This would've fit in perfectly on Man's Ruin, so that should tell you whether you'll be needing to buy this.(RK)
Review By Zookeeper Online WZSU
Straight up, neck-breaking, hold-no-prisoners PUNK ROCK’N’ROLL. Super-fast, slushy, electrifying, balls-out! Love the guitar/vocal melodies. This is 100% unadulterated, no cream, no sugar rawk. Fuel your rockets; put the pedal to the metal. - Elias (Dr Furious)
Review By Punk Information Directory
These guys are from down Tucson way. 22 songs in 23 minutes in all that range from garage to poppy punk. Most are garage punk tunes and would sound right at home on Rip Off Records. Then out of the blue comes a pop sounding song like the "0-2-80" or "Gargamel", although the speed and energy level aren't in line with your normal pop tune. Only 3 songs clock in over 1:30 and two of those are 1:32. Mostly these guys hit you over the head with some pile driving rock n roll. Many of the songs have a Spanish theme to theme but I'm not quite sure where they're coming from with that. I found the CD quite enjoyable and I would recommend it to my garage loving friends. -Willy Aadnoy
Review By Time 2 Rock N'Roll
Swing Ding Amigos are a three piece fronted by the guitarist / singer of the Shark Pants. Wow! They are fuckin' cool. Unconventional, nonsensical, illogical sounds that make me think back to the Dead Kennedys. The Vox have a real cool metallic tone that seems to accidentuate the needly creepy micro-energy pulses that the music delivers into your senses. I love to seizure!!!
MG
Review By Razorcake Magazine
I first saw the Swing Ding Amigos in my living room about four years ago. Somehow close to a hundred people had flocked to our pre-July Fourth party. Fireworks were going off inside the house. Jug wine was being spilled everywhere. The walls were dripping and waves of people were going nuts. I somehow lost my sock, but not my shoe, during their set. The Swing Ding Amigos fit the scene perfectly. Spastic, fast, and so tightly wound--they have that sound that seems incapable of coming out of anywhere except Tucson. On the CD there are more melodies than I remember, and the songs have an addictiveness to them that had me listening to this album only for four days straight. I think my Spanish professor summed them up perfectly. I had to ask her to translate the two songs in Spanish for me. After the first line she looked up at me shocked and said, "Megan, this is very bad. This is very dirty. And they spelled this word wrong." I couldn't agree more. (Megan)
Review By Neufutur.com
Mixing up the rock sounds of Corrosion of Conformity and Fu Manchu with some of the earlier rock of the seventies (think UFO and Kansas), Swing Ding Amigos are a weird creature, to say the least. The double-vocals of a track like "Nyquil" are so off-key and spoken instead of sung, which essentially means that through some weird combination, they are actually catchy. Using different filters (the echo chamber of "Hey Genie") provides for a myriad of different emotions on the disc. "Hey Genie" is more psychedelic, while the straight-forward "0-2-60" will whip listeners into a mosh pitting frenzy. "Tik-tok" uses some of the same figures of song that made "Shout", from Animal House such a memorable hit - different scaling up and down in tempos and the like. Jumping pretty much on a track by track basis between punk and experimental music, the Swing Ding Amigos try to pander to two very distinct groups of individuals with "The Mongolita Chronicles". The material will turn practically everyone off from the CD excepting the most experimental and hardcore fans. This is sad, as the Amigos are beyond impressive in their instrumentation and arrangements on their decidedly non-traditional songs.
Most exciting for me on "The Mongolita Chronicles" is the bi-lingual "Mochate Momia", which jumps back and forth from Spanish to English, only the second track on the disc to do so (besides Tik-Tok). So many bands shuck any heritage or culture they may have for the language of the most affluent market - which often means Americanized English with a "proper" accent, destroying any flair the band may have had in their native tongue. The Amigos are too spastic to stay for more than a minute in any one given genre or song - the 21 tracks seem almost as if they are played by a number of bands instead of the Amigos. The Amigos are the perfect example of a band that means everything to everyone (yes, like the Everclear song) and yet does not dilute their sound for greater success. Equally proficient in everything they do, the energy of the Amigos will win more people as fans than any track that they could commit to disc. There is nary a moment to breathe during "The Mongolita Chronicles", and the average listener will be as exhausted after this disc as the Amigos have to be after finishing up their thirty-minute orgasm on stage.
Top Tracks: Mochata Momia, Beautiful Things
Rating: 6.3/10
Review By Panache Magazine
You know I really like the cover of this album, the colors, the girl, it runs close to a 60's Herb Albert type cover. Anyways, this was recorded a few years ago and finally is seeing the light of day. This album is rock'n'roll dance hard, and tight while making a mark in your eardrum. If I had to break it down it would be a punk rock lo-fi garage while shaking hands with MC5 and doing speed. About half the songs clock in at less than a minute, and only a few break the 2 minute mark, and still every song on this is excellent. Notables on this are "Gargamel," "Ech Pecho," and "Hey Genie." Look for another release soon on Recess Records (DP)
Review By Sleazegrinder
Buncha scruffy garage rawk banditos here, straight outta Tucson, which explains the weirdo spaghetti western flourishes (they DO have cowboys in Tucson, right?) and the 13th Floor psychedelia that winds through these savage little gut-punchers like a groovy virus. The hi-speed Dead Boys riffs and the stoner-punk stuff are less geographically sound, but fit into the master plan just fine. Well, as much as these ADD-stricken fuckers can muster a master plan. Apparently, this album was originally recorded three years ago, and is only now seeing the light of day, because the band finally stopped rockin’ enuff to release it. You know the type. These manic swing dingers have so many ideas rolling around in their blistered brains that most of these songs average out at a measly 60 seconds per song, with nary a breath between, before they rip into the next number. There’s like, 22 tracks here, and it’s still over before you’ve even properly settled into their dirty-ass fuzz-punk grooves. That’s not gonna stop me from declaring the head shakin’ psyche-rawk “Pink Chiffon” as the slinkiest, sleaziest track on deck, but then, I’m a professional. Anyway, even if it is as choppy as an old super 8 porn loop, “Mongolita” is like a big ball of piss and fire and tumbleweeds and cartoon bikers, all rolling right into yr lap at 85 miles per hour. And then splitting, just as quickly. And that, you gotta admit, is still pretty fuckin’ cool.
Review By The Neus Subjex
It has finally happened, just when I thought that the world of music has gone to complete shit along comes The Swing Ding Amigos. There is a GOD!!!! This has got to be the best thing to happen to real punk rock in years. Every FUCKING song is fantastic. I have had this CD in my player ever since receiving it. No five minute songs to bore the piss out of you, just straight forward, fast as hell rock'n'roll that makes everything else in my collection collect dust. When I first put in this disc I was thinking of THE COWS but they mellowed out and I don't listen to them anymore. I took it upon myself to see if there was anything else out there by these guys and EUREKA! e-mail is a great tool to have when writing reviews. In fact, there is more, and I'll be getting my copy for free suckers! Take it from me, 'The Mongolita Chronicles' is a must have. 20+ songs that don't let up. Look for their new album coming out soon entitled"Kings of Culo" on Recess Records. Get it from your favorite record store, or get it from their label. Life is sweet again. (Dave Fishwick)
Review By Hussieskunk.com
So its said that this disc sat for almost three years before seeing the light of day... Was that a good thing to hide it? Absolutely not! SDA offer up some of the most bizzare punk, country, rock, garge fusion noise that I have ever heard! Twenty-two tracks of saucy, bi-lingual, stylistic racket, where not a single track exceeds two minutes. Dishing out fat and ferocious guitar rock and then blending in samples that only add to the intensity, SDA are truely a one of a kind act. It must be terribly hard to follow this band after one of their sets! I don't think Tucson, Arizona knows what to do with the SDA...they have got to stand out like a sore thumb at every club and venue, but I can only image that people are wrapped around the block to get in to see and feel their energy. I gotta say my favorite tracks are "Tik-Tok" it approaches punk rock the most, simple bu effective! Then there's "Gargamel" where the guitar work sounds strangely like a Dead Boys song, but with hauntingly sweet vocal harmonies over it. The band delves into instrumentals that are just as fast and furious as any other track on the album! Quite literally a bizzare sound is achieved by SDA, but it isn't bad, it's quite admirable. Whether its the garage rock, 70s power chords, or the punk rock that the band is playing, they consistantly make it their own and make it altogether their own sound! The disc is incredibly fast, but that gives you time to listen to it two or three times through. Trust me, the appreciation for what SDA are pushing out there will come through about halfway through the second listen. "The Mongolita Chronicals" is a strange sounding album to be sure, but once you're in the bands domain, you have nothing to do but concede that they are great! -MG
Review By TruePunk.com
Swing Ding Amigos play powerful and driving rock, in the vein of Rocket From the Crypt, Didjits, and the Supersuckers. Things are very loud, distorted, and come off sounding sloppy, although the musicians are competent. There’s only so much of this kind of stuff that I can take, though, and the album wears very thin after the first few songs, which rocked my pants off. This doesn’t suck, by any means, but it does become pretty boring by the end of the disc.
Review By Shredding Paper
Energetic blasts of noisy punk rock chaos from Tucson, in A.D.D. sized spurts (average song length: 1:05). The sound quality is nasty, but not low-fi or poorly recorded. It’s just the band mastering its craft. The lyrics of the songs primarily concern trivial matters of the lowbrow nature: drinking, women, drinking, and raising hell, but they also make some strange, stream of drugged-consciousness mystical connections that will necessitate checking the lyric sheet (“Waiting for the sun to come to end the ghost fuck ride”, or “your radiation’s got me peeling like a viper in the sun”). The lyrics also belt out memorable lines such as “I want to see you motherfuckers do the smurf”, and a lot of references to wanting to see girls “shake it”. Listeners won’t get bored with this disc, that’s for sure. On the flipside, there’s barely enough time to hook into songs because they’re over in a flash. - Xtian
Review By Utter Trash
This band sounds kind of like The MC5 on 78rpm, with some seventies punk and sixties garage influence thrown in for good measure. Not all of the songs make an impression, but a few stand out. “Gargamel” takes a variation on the “Sonic Reducer” riff and puts a more melodic vocal line on top of it to nice effect. “Eco Pecho” and “Caligula” are strong tracks, as well. Probably the best tune is a sixties garage rock “dance craze” type number called “The Smurf”. The production sounds very retro. The guitar sound once again calls to mind The MC5, and everything sounds like it’s in the red, like on a Sonics album. My biggest problem with Swing Ding Amigos is it feels like these guys are in too much of a hurry to get to the finish line. While this may seem an odd comparison, the songs remind me of early Guided by Voices in the sense that just as you start to get into them, they’re over. About half the songs clock in at less than a minute, and only one breaks the 2 minute mark. I’m not asking for Yes’ ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’, but another chorus thrown on the end wouldn’t hurt. I know attention spans aren’t what they used to be, but the snippets of songs on here are good enough that I’m sure folks would pay attention for another 30 seconds or so. Remember, kids. Speed kills. (Bob Ignizio)
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