How It All Started

C.R.I.S.I.S. (Concrete Revolution Into Society Intended For Salvation) was started as some sort of side project which was originally named Smack Some Salt. This side project was started by Virgilio Mariona and me (Paolo Bettaglio) who later on brought in some of his band mates from Peroxide; his cousin Tomas Palomo (bass for Peroxide) and his friend Gerardo Vallejo (guitar for Peroxide). After a few months Tomas left for college at Miami leaving us without a bass player so we asked our friend Roberto Bonilla (Eto) to play bass for this new band we were starting.

Months later Virgilio finally bought a drum set and Eto pulled some strings and managed to get a bass. Our 1^st “rehearsal” was on September 23, 2003 and it was a complete mess. We didn’t know if we still wanted Vallejo in the band so we didn’t tell him about the rehearsal, Virgilio had no high hats and no stool, Eto had never played bass before and I had to borrow a guitar because mine was stolen about a week before. That rehearsal was hilarious. I tried to sing and play guitar but back then it was useless, Eto was following my lead and Virgilio was just improvising.

After some months of practicing by ourselves we decided to rehearse again, this time with Vallejo. We practiced this punk cover of phantom of the opera we had done with Peroxide and some other covers. A few rehearsals later we started to write our own songs (something that we had never done before). The band was now really looking good to the point that songs were coming out just so naturally, but this would not last for long. Some time later the band started having discussions and we were starting to think we really would be better off without Vallejo and apparently he also felt that he would be better off leaving the band. So, lucky us he ended up quitting. After Vallejo left we looked back at the songs we were writing and we came to the conclusion that we weren’t completely comfortable with what we were writing due to the fact that all the songs we had were very pop-punkish (yes that genre of backstreet boys with instruments *note this also includes emo).

Due to Vallejo’s departure we had to find a new guitarist. After looking for a few months we thought Rodrigo Argüello would be a good choice for a new guitarist since he was a good friend of ours and showed a lot of enthusiasm towards playing in the band but unfortunately Rodrigo wasn’t ready to play in a band yet. So we resorted to another friend Juan Salinas. Salinas growing up in a family of musicians loved music and had been playing guitar for a while now. So we thought he was ideal for the slot. With Salinas we recorded the demo version of “Out Of My Mind” (our 1^st single). We even were on “La Femenina”, which is a local radio station. Weeks after our appearance at the radio station Virgilio and his family left to California and Salinas decided that he no longer wanted to play punk and eventually decided to quit the band. 

Before Salinas’s departure we had talked with our friends in a local punk band called Major Felony about sticking together and helping each others band out. So when Salinas left the band Major Felony helped us out for a while. We all rehearsed together various times both C.R.I.S.I.S. and Major Felony songs. After a few months various disagreements emerged between the members of M.F. resulting in the leaving of lead guitarist, Carlos Rosales and drummer, Juan Lecha. After leaving M.F. Carlos and Juan talked with Eto and me and we asked them if they would like to come over to C.R.I.S.I.S. without thinking twice both agreed to join C.R.I.S.I.S.

Unfortunately later on Eto started to listen to emo a lot and we started to argue a lot over music, and he no longer seemed to like the stuff we were doing so we decided it be best if we were to go our separate ways and still be friends. After Eto leaving the band we decided to ask this new kid in school who played bass, Joesph Pastelok if he wanted to play in C.R.I.S.I.S. Joe agreed to be our bass player and since things have been going really well for C.R.I.S.I.S. We currently have 5 songs and are working on a couple more to release our very 1^st E.P.