Introducing: Santa Cruz – UK Tour Kicks Off Tonight!

Santa Cruz is a Finnish modern hard rock band formed in the summer of 2007 in Helsinki by “Archie” and “Johnny.” With the mutual aspiration of playing rock music the two shared the same goals and similar same passion for a band to be. Inspired by greats as Skid Row and Guns N’ Roses, the name Santa Cruz was chosen as the title of their vision of a perfect hard rock band. In the beginning of the following year, Middy joined in to play the bass. A year and a half (and two drummers) later Taz was found to man the drum throne permanently, cementing the line-up of the 4-piece band.

Introducing themselves to a larger audience in the semifinal stage of the Finnish nationwide band competition Ääni ja Vimma in 2009, Santa Cruz released two demos in 2008–2009, the latter of which, “Another Rush Of Adrenaline”, received remarkable reviews on the media. Word of mouth about Cruz crew’s explosive stage presence and rabble-rousing shows spread like wildfire, resulting in a lengthy succession of shows (the band played well over a 150 shows while still in demo stage) which in turn established the band as the hardest working men of metal mayhem in Finland.

Since then, they have gone on to release three studio albums, the latest of which is 2017’s “Bad Blood Rising” which is now available for purchas in both physical and digital formats.

We sent the band some questions to help get a better understanding for what they’re about, here’s what they had to say:

You’re gearing up for the release of your latest album, did you approach this album any differently as your first three?
Well this time we took time off and went to rehearsal place to finish the songs, with the second album we didn´t have time to do that, cause we were touring constantly.

Do you consider yourselves to be part of a glam metal revival, or more a new wave of glam metal with a modern edge?
Fuck no hahah, we are just a Rock band that kicks ass and that does whatever we want musically

What did you learn from touring with Sebastian Bach last year?
Learn to say no if you really don´t wanna do something. That´s the thing that you forget when people ask you to do all kind of stupid things just to make them laugh.

What do you think about the state of rock/metal music in today’s music scene?
Rock is not dead, it´s just sleeping, and it´s gonna wake up sooner than you think. Well if you check out the monster bands like Guns N Roses that earned like what 300 million last year or something like that. That shows that there´s still peopole that listen rock but there are not so many good new rock bands with original ideas.

What was the first album you ever purchased?
Deep Purple: 30 Best Of

When was the first time you knew you wanted to be a musician?
When I started to play piano at the age of seven, and definitely after I got my first guitar when I was 10 years old

What is one goal your band hopes to achieve by the end of 2017?
Just play shows around the Europe, we have a European tour coming up now starting end of this month, and next year we go to the states and tour the Europe again, and also go to Japan.

You can see Santa Cruz live in the UK now at the following tour dates: