some other nice things some other nice people have said

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The New Haven Advocate {03.11.09}

   Tear Me to Shreds
 Atrina's harrowing performance strips the crowd bare

    I haven't quite fully put myself back together after the sound ass-whooping Atrina delivered  
  at Two Boots in Bridgeport last Friday. Their set left me with the same delicious stabbed-in-the-guts
feeling that vintage P. J. Harvey evokes. Atrina are in good company: they fit into a noteworthy and
    largely unsung company of female-fronted grunge rockers from dilapidated Connecticut towns, including
         bands like Farewood and Eula.

  Atrina looks nothing like their music. Bandleader Kelly L'Heureux's dress and hair and cheeky cheeks all    hint more toward indie than alternative. Aside from drummer Dave Parmelee's Godflesh T-shirt (and even that       band is eclipsed by its newer, more hipster-friendly incarnation, Jesu), there's not a hint of   recognizable scenester iconography on stage. What's more, I left the show thinking that Atrina's two axmen         looked familiar, and some Google-fu confirmed my suspicions. Bassist Will Iannuzi also mans the low    end for trashy punkabilly scumbags the Vultures; and the tall guy who kept his back to the audience the whole time was none other than Phil Law, who transforms into a bass-pawing math-metal lunatic when playing in    Bloarzeyd. Shit, dude, even the band's pedigree makes them impossible to pigeonhole.

  But it's nice to be disarmed. Atrina force you to meet them with openness and wonderment, rather than
      superficial expectations based on their clothes or equipment. And it ultimately pans out, since
          the feel of their music is iconic. Their set was marked by turbulent riffs in
   angular time signatures. L'Heureux's vocals were relentless, plaintive; she wasn't yelling or
      screaming, and yet her lyrics seemed to evacuate her voice before they ever reached the audience,
           leaving us with just the sound itself, a husk of something communicated.
                     Chilling, morbid, and delicious. 

  (Dan Berry)



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ct indie interview {10.07.08}

   Riffs Are Universal: An interview with Atrina's Kelly L'Hereux
      Kelly L'Heureux recently talked with CT Indie about the band's new form, older songs growing into newer    songs, the new self-released EP {beautiful evidence}, and Kelly's own renewed sense of self.
    read the full interview with ct indie here


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one bass on an overthrow {09.14.08}

   Atrina's presentation still needs a bit of work-- to be fair, they've apparently got five years' worth of   rust to contend with-- but their songs are really great; nice bottom-heavy rock stuff with some spacier       passages in between, sorta like a more rugged Farewood. Like that's gonna help anyone, seeing as most of     you haven't heard any of the newer Farewood stuff, but y'know, that's what the song down below is for.

     Atrina - "Beautiful Evidence"
        


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The New Haven Advocate {07.18.08}

 Atrina walks into BAR
    For what feels like, in retrospect, a glorious yet brief  moment earlier this decade, Atrina was one of the   most promising rock bands in town. Powerful and confident, they struck a balance between rock history and     hipness, a kind of  zeigeist-capturing cool.

 With a lineup of four vets of the regional rock scene, a  muscular and moody sound that could be described as    some sort of post-punk art-garage rock, and a  handful of cracking songs, the band gigged around New Haven  in support of the gritty and thoroughly rocking EP Searching for a Better Way, then…seemed to disappear.     Atrina's last gig was at Toad's Place at the end of July 2003.

   But now, five  years later, they're back, playing a show at BAR this Sunday, toting an advance CD-R (the disc  is currently being mastered in Chicago) of the new EP, {beautiful evidence}. The disc, and the band's current   incarnation (which includes Vultures/Goose Lane drummer Dave Parmelee, Bloarzeyd/Humanoid bassist Phil Law, both new Atrina members, and longtime bassist Will Ianuzzi, also of The   Vultures), represents "a continuation   of the next natural step of the band," singer/guitarist Kelly L'Heureux said in a recent phone conversation.

      The band's working in, she says, "a similar style, different feeling. Especially when you bring two    people in who were audience members before, they absorb it in a new way. Every song is kind of just a mood.  Everything that fits that mood is right."
 
  In a recent e-mail, L'Heureux explains that while Atrina "kind of fell apart" in 2003, after which she       "dropped out of the scene for awhile," she long viewed the band as an unfinished project.

 Atrina's show at BAR, playing with Californian neo-psych band Film School, features the films of Ancient Domain, the nom de film of a college friend of L'Heureux's. Sales of Atrina's CD-R will be funneled directly  into pledging for L'Heureux's bike ride for the Connecticut Challenge in support of cancer survivors. Once
  the EP comes out in earnest, a dollar of each sale will continue to go toward the Connecticut Challenge.

 (Brian LaRue)



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confluence.za.net {07.04.05}

    a blogger reacts to atrina after stumbling across these mp3s...
  Something about these songs just grabbed me as soon as I heard them, although the quality of some of the       recordings isn't very good. The music is weirdly atonal in places, and uses chords which nobody else seems
    to use - which is possibly why I like it so much.

   Recommendations: Memento, Eviscerate, Polaroid, Sulu, Seven Ways, Spy, Witness, Sci-Fi #2.



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Old Rainer Maria Website {march 2003}

       band spotlight
    A little touch of garage, a little bit of electroclash, and a whole lotta rock. This relatively new
      band from the hinterlands of Connecticut have loads of songs you can download from their site.
  If their live show is as intense as their recordings, they'll be showing up on the bigger
    stages pretty soon.