Critical Me - Promised Land (2007 Magnitude 6.19 Records)

When I'm out at thrift stores, something I keep my eye out for are CD's and records by San Diego bands that I've never heard of. Why? Maybe it's some sort of half-hearted attempt to catalog the local scene, maybe it's some perverted type of (adopted) hometown pride. I dunno. But I can't help it. Critical Me falls into that. Until I grabbed this I had never heard of them.

Critical Me is/was a melodic punk band from Jamul, out in the hilly back country east of San Diego.
This is very SoCal mid-90's skate punk, and would have fit in well on Fearless, Know or Lethal Records. While it can for sure sound dated at times, I liked SoCal mid-90's skate punk, so this hits a nostalgic sweet spot for me. There have been a lot of really bad attempts to emulate that era of punk, but Critical Me does a pretty dang good job.  "Promised Land" and "Halfway Home" stand out in particular.

1. Promised Land
2. No Escape
3. Russian Roulette
4. Halfway Home
5. Excuses
6. King Greed
7. Going Nowhere
8. Through My Eyes
9. Armegeddon
10. Waiting In Line
11. Same 'ol Bullshit

DL