The dark side of the Cali­for­nia sun is about to shine on us as San Diego duo Cro­codiles begin a series of shows in NZ this week– kick­ing off at SFBH this Wed­nes­day Decem­ber 2nd with sup­port from Wel­ling­ton swamp-disco legends Thought Creature.

For the unini­ti­ated, Cro­codiles songs began sling­ing across the Inter­webs after No Age named the band’s song “Neon Jesus” as one of their Top Ten shred­ders of 2008. Unpromp­ted, the for­ward-think­ing Fader Blog pos­ted two more stun­ner tracks, ’I Wanna Kill’ and ’Sum­mer of Hate’. The influ­en­tial Ste­reogum named them “Band to Watch” and described them as “The Vel­vet Under­ground swinging Jesus and Mary Chain.”

Cro­codiles’ homet­own San Diego is a sleepy mil­it­ary town, stuck between Tijuana and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but it isn’t Surf City, USA. Hells Angels, jocks, drug cas­u­al­ties, and the med­ic­ated rich pop­u­late the beaches, and while war­planes rumble in and out of the nav­al base. The kids here are bored. Charles Row­ell and Brandon Welchez played in vari­ous bands (includ­ing The Plot to Blow Up The Eif­fel Tower who played some mem­or­able shows here in 2005) before the duo struck out on their own as Cro­codiles. They quickly self-released a 7″ single and used it as an excuse to escape their tarpit homet­own. Cro­codiles album ’Sum­mer of Hate’ is born of the ali­en­a­tion and frus­tra­tion fuel­ling their ini­tial pair­ing.

Pre­s­ales for this show are a ridonku­lous $23 for an inter­na­tion­al act, avail­able from our friends at Good as Gold, Real Groovy and undertheradar.co.nz. But act now and you shall receive a double pass for the even more ridonku­lous price of free!

All you need to do is leave a com­ment telling us why you should be the lucky recip­i­ent. We’ll draw a win­ner at the end of Tues­day and put them on the door list. Easy.