Weaponized Nostalgia: CRYSTALATOR Steps Through

After circling that door for a decade, CRYSTALATOR has finally made it through it. Slip Into the Core represents that moment between feedback and silence. The stale smell of beer on concrete floors, the hum of static through the walls, and the final track leaves ash on your fingers.

This EP isn't a debut, it's an arrival. It records the band's long Hero's Journey through false starts, resets at studios, life interrupting music, and then finally the pulling back into themselves. You hear Dave Gibson's drums come in first: loud, unapologetic, and the ghost of 90s rock looms large. Harry Rush and Kelly Haldane layer bass, guitar, and vocals together until they create songs that are one big mess vs being polished off; they are welded together, the messiness stays, that's their intended purpose.

There's a sense of nostalgia here, however it has been weaponized. You can hear the influence of Filter in the way they balance electronic sounds with guitars; you can hear the ghost of Frankenstein's drum kits in their raw-ness, along with the jaggedness of the tones they use. You can hear the different rooms where these songs were recorded, such as: Roundhead, Parachute, BigPop; you can also hear the rehearsals and late nights and learning curves through these recordings.

The conclusion of the chapter "Slip Into The Core" does not seem to imply an end. Instead, it conveys an honest message representing the final statement made when there is no longer any activity.