Passionate, claustrophobic, angry protest hardcore played by Puerto Rican punks in NYC. “Pánico” is a scathing reflection on what it’s like to be alive and in the streets screaming for change in a world full of bigotry and deafness. The pure systemic stupidity is truly panic inducing. You feel your body start turning on itself and suffocating from the outside in. A bitter fucking reality aggressively squeezing the last breath from your body.Our take: Panico is the debut full-length from this band of Puerto Rican punks from New York. We wrote about their demo tape back in 2019, so it seems as if these songs have been in the oven for a minute, and they sound like it… Panico is a remarkable record with top-notch songwriting. It’s easy to miss that on the first listen, though, because La Milagrosa sounds so gnarly here… the production is gritty and ugly (yet still powerful), more like contemporary d-beat hardcore with the throat-shredding, echo-drenched vocals, pounding drums right up front, and a mix that’s intense and in your face. Combining hardcore-ish performance and production with catchier songwriting gives La Milagrosa a UK82-ish feel on tracks like “Bastardos,” but their songs are much subtler than what you might hear from your typical mohawks-and-leather band. While this might not occur to anyone else, there’s something way in the background of La Milagrosa’s songwriting that reminds me of Bad Religion (when they were good)… many of the riffs have a slightly mournful quality (check out the cool minor chord on “Asesinos”), and the songs have a kernel of pop in them that makes them both more propulsive and more satisfying than your typical punk tracks. I’m probably splitting hairs and most people will just throw this on and say “it rips,” but I think there’s something more to Panico than just ripping.
