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.