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Feb 7, 2018In Criminal, Luis Vasquez has constructed an album dark and bleak in nature, an exploration that sees him turn his attention to creating hard hitting industrial rock in order to deal with all he's lived through. It's a record of which he can be proud.
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Feb 7, 2018While there is still room for improvement-–the still clear Nine Inch Nails references somewhat prove that--Criminal will please both fans of the genre and intrigue potential newcomers, of which there will be plenty to this strange, niche genre.
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Feb 6, 2018Despite the album adopting a confessional structure, the characteristic elements of The Soft Moon’s aggression remains. And it all sounds dirtier, gritter and angrier than ever.
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Feb 2, 2018There are no easy answers or happy endings here; as Vasquez grows more skilled at expressing his pain, he delivers his bleakest--and most cohesive--music yet.
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Feb 2, 2018The most complete result of his vision he’s committed to record thus far.
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Feb 2, 2018Most of the risks he takes on Criminal pay off, and the record is among his most confident statements as an artist.
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Feb 2, 2018While that poetry-journal melodrama grows a tad exhausting by album’s end, there are plenty of deliciously bitter pleasures here for anyone who similarly loves brooding in that blacked-out, candlelit bedroom of the mind.
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Feb 7, 2018Vasquez’s new album, Criminal, batters down the restraints that choked back his voice in the past, letting him break from a whisper into, finally, a scream. If it isn’t his most nuanced record, it’s certainly his most decisive.
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Mar 9, 2018Criminal is not an album designed as background music. Nor is it an album meant as escapist entertainment. It is, rather, a strong statement of how personal pain can shape art and, further, a reminder that, amidst all the turmoil of its inspiration, beauty can be found in aggression and catharsis.
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UncutFeb 5, 2018"Young" offers brief flashes of a youthful Cure, but the fuzzy "Choke," about cocaine abuse, is underpinned by a malignant industrial beat, and the dominant mood remains that of an emaciated, homicidal Gary Numan. [Mar 2018, p.32]