The self-titled debut album from Swedish AOR band, Cruzh, will be released on August 26th. The album cut “Hard To Get” is streaming below:

Cruzh was put together after the demise of Swedish glam rockers TrashQueen, in which both Anton Joensson and Dennis Butabi Borg played. They shared a love for melodic rock and AOR and joined forces with Tony Andersson, who previously worked as a studio musician on the never released TrashQueen record.

It all started in March 2013 when Cruzh was announced online. The only things shown to the public were an image of the silhouette of the three band members, the debut song "In A Blink Of An Eye”, information that the band was Swedish, and the text "Get ready for the Cruzh". The song quickly spread on the internet and both Swedish and international websites and radio stations played it and speculated about the identities of the band members. In May came the sequel "Stay", which continued in the same melodic rock spirit. Meanwhile, the band spread various clues on social media regarding their whereabouts. In the fall of 2013 Cruzh had reached a point where they chose to “unmask” and take it all to the next level and reach out to the masses together with the release of the Hard To Get EP, the first of two very successful self-produced demos. Hard To Get and its successor, the darker Aim For The Head got great reviews worldwide.

By late spring of 2015, just when Cruzh was about to release a new EP, they were approached by Frontiers Music Srl who wanted to sign the band, so Cruzh started the recording process by the end of summer 2015. The result is truly an awesome debut, in the spirit of Def Leppard, Danger Danger, H.E.A.T, Winger, Firehouse and Bryan Adams.

“We all share the love for Melodic Rock,” says bassist Dennis Butabi Borg, “but in the meantime we all have very different musical background and inspirations. This shows in our songs”. “When we started out, almost immediately I felt this synergy in the band,” adds Tony Andersson, “and despite our musical backgrounds and differences, we all head in the same direction.” “When a piece of music is coming to me and I am developing someone else’s work, I am filled with some sort of emotion that I want to convey,” concludes guitarist Anton Joensson, “it’s easy to do this in a natural way with Cruzh because I could not feel more at home with our band and the music we create. This is also true with Tony and Dennis. This is who we are!”

Tracklisting:

“In N' Out Of Love”
“First Cruzh”
“Aim For The Head”
“Anything For You”
“Survive”
“Stay”
“Hard To Get”
“You”
“Set Me Free”
“Before I Walk Alone”
“Straight From My Heart”

“Aim For The Head”:

“First Cruzh” video:

EPK:

Cruzh lineup:

Dennis Butabi Borg – bass
Anton Joensson – rhythm, lead and acoustic guitars on all tracks, backing vocals
Tony Andersson – lead vocals on all tracks, keyboards

With:

Erik Wiss – piano on “Anything For You”, intro on “In N’ Out Of Love”
Louisian Boltner – drums on all tracks
Mattias Silfver – backing vocals on all tracks
Martin Johansson – backing vocals on “Anything For You”
Patrik Norén – backing vocals on “Aim For The Head”