20 years is a long time between collaborations, but Crocotta brings several familiar names from the Massachusetts hardcore scene back into the same room.
The new band features vocalist Jason Clegg, guitarist Shawn Bredberg, drummer Joseph Shumsky, and guitarist David Policastro, with members whose past and present credits include Think I Care, New Lows, Fit for Abuse, and Prisoner Abuse. Musically, Crocotta pairs heavy hardcore with the grime and atmosphere of early ’90s death metal, drawing inspiration from the Golden Era of Roadrunner Records and Earache Records.
With their self-titled debut EP now out through Rebirth Records, I caught up with Clegg and Bredberg about working together again, the death metal side of their sound, and why Crocotta is more than a one-off project.
What brought everyone back together, and was there a moment when you realized this was becoming an actual band rather than just old friends messing around with riffs?
Shawn Bredberg, guitar: Reconnecting with Joe doing those Think I Care shows in 2025 was the spark. I had a few songs left over from when New Lows broke up, along with some unfinished ideas. We started jamming and tweaking what we had until it clicked. I wanted Dave from New Lows on the other guitar. We’ve played together for so long that we’re locked in, and he brought in his friend Adam to handle bass.
Jason and I had always talked about doing another band together, but we knew if he sang, Think I Care would get brought up every time people talked about us, at least initially. Which is cool, but also kind of starting on weird footing. Joe and I kicked around a few other ideas first, but nothing worked out, so we just said fuck it and convinced Jason.
Jason Clegg, vocals: I thought I’d maybe try to play bass, but after I heard the songs, I thought they should get a real bassist. Then we sort of kicked around the idea of me doing the vocals, but as Shawn said, we were a little on the fence. The tracks were all recorded with Shawn and Joe a few weeks earlier, so I sat with them and put together my part.
There's obviously a lot of history in this lineup. Did you consciously want Crocotta to sound different from your previous bands, or did some of those old musical instincts come back as soon as you started writing together again? By the way, I love DFJ's description of the EP on the Rebirth Records page!
Jason: Yeah, for sure. We started playing together in high school, so our influences and what we were interested in playing have changed a lot. I don’t know if we could write those older records again today.
Shawn: It wasn’t a conscious decision to sound different. It was just what we wanted to play. I had a vision for a hardcore/death metal band that I thought would be in its own lane. I messed around with some different tunings and eventually settled on C#.
I was playing guitar a lot and trying to improve, which really opened up my creativity. Joe is a really fast drummer and hits super hard. That was a new element that we leaned into. It helped make it more intense.
[Musician] DFJ [Justin DeTore] was a huge help the whole way. I was bouncing ideas off him a lot, and he came to help out with the recording and especially the mixing.
There’s a strong ’90s death metal influence running through Crocotta’s hardcore. Which bands or records were you drawing from when writing this material? I was huge into that era of death metal, so I have my own theories, but what do you think makes that sound work so well with hardcore?
Shawn: I was listening to a lot of classic Morbid Angel, Deicide, and grind like Napalm Death’s Mentally Murdered and Brutal Truth’s Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses. For specific atmosphere and tone, it was records like Baphomet’s The Dead Shall Inherit, Morpheus Descends’ Chronicles of the Shadowed Ones, Suffocation’s Human Waste, and early Gorguts.
I think that era is a good fit because the sound is raw and grimy, but still hard-hitting. There were a lot of incredibly creative players back then, and a lot of them moved on from that specific style pretty quickly. Because of that, there are so many awesome riffs and atmospheric ideas that can still be explored and expanded on today.
Jason: I don’t get as deep in the weeds, but I always find myself preferring bands with some sort of punk influence, even if it is buried deep.
I didn’t want to sound like I have on other recordings, but I also didn’t want to do something that wasn’t authentic and repeatable. So for me, it was bands like Siege and Obituary. I didn’t really have a chance to grow with the songs because I got the finished product, so I'd just listen in my work van and yell like a lunatic to hammer out the kinks.
Shawn, how did approach writing the riffs, and how much of the material came from ideas you'd been sitting on versus material written specifically for this project? In other words, did you have bangers in your back pocket for years?
Shawn: It was definitely a mix. I had a few song structures from writing for New Lows, along with specific riffs I’d been sitting on for years. But starting a fresh project gave us the freedom to shape those ideas into something different. We wrote plenty of new parts specifically for this record, including a few riffs days before recording, which Joe loved, obviously.
After reconnecting musically for the first time in two decades, does Crocotta feel like something you want to keep building, or was the initial goal simply to make this record together and see what happened?
Shawn: It’s definitely something we want to keep building. The response to the EP has been great, and we’re looking forward to writing more music and playing some shows.
Jason: I think it’s important to remain creative, whatever that means to any individual person. So I hope we can keep the train on the tracks for a while, jam ourselves in a van, and sleep on a shitty hotel floor.
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The Crocotta 7" is available via Rebirth Records.
Crocotta on social media: Instagram
Tagged: crocotta, new lows, prisoner abuse, think i care
