How Come You Didn’t Tell Me Dino Campanella was Playing Drums for ††† (Crosses)???

Dino Campanella is the man. On the scale of drummers I could watch play all day long he’d rank damn near the top. Aside from how the Dredg skinsman manages to play keyboards/samples at the same time as he drums — which is pretty impressive — there’s nothing he does that’s overtly technical, but it’s all about dat style, maaaaan! Dino plays with a pocket so deep, a groove so heavy, finesse so smooth… it’s rare you find that in the heavy music community (off the top of the dome, These Arms Are Snakes’ Chris Common is the only other dude I can think of on Dino’s level in that regard). He also smacks the crap out of the drums, lifting his arms high above his head, coming down with serious force (but no less precision) and inevitably breaking a giant redwood’s worth of sticks per show. And that aforementioned piano thing. In short, he’s just an absolute pleasure to watch play.

And yet I had no idea he was playing with ††† (Crosses). I mean, it makes sense — Chino Moreno / Deftones, Shaun Lopez / Far and Dredg are all from Northern California, came up in the late ’90s / early ’00s and have probably shared a doob or seventeen in their lifetimes — but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. I’ve read about Chris Robyn (Far) and Gil Sharone (ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan) as being involved with this project, but I’ve never seen Dino mentioned. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention: this MTV interview from all the way back in early 2012 talks about how ††† first hooked up with Dino.

So it is. But a nice surprise indeed! I was already excited to see ††† live, but now I’m even more so. Here’s some drum-cam footage of Dino doing his thing in Corpus Christi earlier this month. Bad ass.

[via The PRP]