Tear Me to Shreds
                       Atrina's harrowing performance strips the crowd bare
                              New Haven Advocate | Wednesday, March 11, 2009 | By Dan Barry

                                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.