EARTH CRISIS

Straight Edge warriors strike back

After eight long years of silence American veterans of metalcore return under CENTURY MEDIA flag with the new album simply called “To The Death”. Band’s guitarist Scott Crouse told us almost all about: band’s reunion, finding a perfect home at the metal label and staying loyal to the same ideals after so many years.

- Hi Scott. Seems like you've perfectly choosen the moment for EARTH CRISIS’ reunion. Today your band's name is more actual than ever.
Yeah I agree. I think people are able now a little more to get our message and the meaning behind the band. More than it was in the 90s. I think it’s actually little more actual. Just look at the troubles that we are in as a world.

- "To The Death" is your first album after band's reunion in 2007. So I'd like to go back to the moment when you decided to go back on the stage together again. Who or what was the driving force behind this resurrection?
You know when we stopped in 2001 it wasn’t for the standard reasons that most bands quit or split. It wasn’t that we didn’t get along or anything like that. We were just little burnt out from the touring We wanted also to focus more on families and things like that. I think that in the back of our minds we all kinda knew that someday we will play as EARTH CRISIS again. I think that we should look at that period rather as a break, a time to focus on some other things and come back to it. We all knew that it’s gonna happen. During those years that we weren’t in the band we had so many offers to play live. Finally we said that there is a milion of reasons that we should do that and we can’t think of any reasons why we shouldn’t do it again. We wanted to play music together. The time seemed great. And we can all make it work out with a new label now. So it was a perfect time to bring a band back into our lives. One of the things was also that we’ve played in EARTH CRISIS for so long. It’s part of our lives. And we really all missed it a lot.

-How important was a fact that you've had PATH OF RESISTANCE and Karl, Ian and Erick play in FREYA?
Absoutely it was really important. I mean that’s the thing. We all stayed really close with each other over the years. It wasn’t like we have abandoned the music. We did our best, cause music is something that we really love to do. Like you’ve mentioned Karl, Ian and Erick have FREYA and all of us have PATH OF RESISTANCE with a few friends of us: Jonathan and DJ. So it helped us to be still involved in the music scene.

-What was your main aim when you decided to play again? Only to play some festivals or immediately you’ve already knew that there’s going to be a new record?
We were actually discussing recording of a new album before we’ve played any shows. With the shows we knew that something’s gonna happen, because we got the offers all the time since we broke up 2001. I think that we kinda took it slowly. Let’s play one show. And then let’s play another show. Then do a tour and go to Europe for some festivals. We were just taking things slowly instead of jumping into the deep sea.

-So how did you start writing songs for new record?
I have my own home studio and I have been writing songs and recording them since pretty much we stopped playing in 2001. They were written not with a really intention for EARTH CRISIS, but I decided to put them aside saying: If it ever happens, these will be good songs for EARTH CRISIS. I think that I have written something like 70 songs since 2001 so I had a pretty large vault of music to choose from and I think some that some of songs from the new record date back to 2005. I think that I’ve presented finally something like 20 songs to everybody and said hey these are ones that I think will work out for new EA record and then everybody added their own little pieces and some parts were changed. But I’ve had a lot of basic material written already. There’s still coupe of songs that we all really liked, but we didn’t have time to work out.

- When you were finally ready to record new songs, did you use your home studio for the recordings? How would you compare “To The Death” session to those from the past? Were there any special emotions that accompanied you during the recordings?
We did actually recorded it in the studio in Syracuse where we all grew up. I actually live in California. I was able to demo all the stuff here and then we all really get a feel of which songs we should use. Then we all got together and worked on the songs for some time before we actaully recorded them. We recorded it all in a place called a Castle Recording Studios in Utica, New York. So we all go together there and tracked the record like a normal band. We were very anxious and nervous. You know a lot of bands come back and put the record and it just doen’t have the same fire. It’s lacking some of the intensity that they used to have.We didn’t wanted to put a record like that, so that’s why we were really anxious. We were trying really hard so that this record would maintain the vibe that EARTH CRISIS always had. And finally we are really proud of it.

-Whose idea was it to hire Tue Madsen to mix the album? Did the label have any suggestions or maybe you've liked his work with bands like: SICK OF IT ALL or THE HAUNTED?
It was our suggestion and it was a really good thing, because he was somebody that I have had in mind since the day when we decided to do this. He was a person that I wanted to work with. I wanted actually him to produce whole thing or at least just mix it. So label had a very good with him, they’ve worked with Tue in the past so it was pretty easy. We just said: hey we all want Tue Madsen to mix and they did a few phone calls and it happens. Tue was really enthiusiastic and eager to mix the record, so it worked out really well. We decided to produce the album ourselves . Just because we know how EARTH CRISIS should sound like at this point. We are already pretty skilled in studio, but we need sombody who is more skilled to mix the whole thing.

-In 1998 Rob Flynn appeared on "Breed The Killers". Didn't you think of inviting any of your friends to appear on new album?
Yeah we actually talked about it a lot and there were some people that we wanted to invite to do some parts on our records. But after some discussions we decided to come back as EARTH CRISIS. No thrills, no extras just straight up and heavy, kind of this is what we are record. I think that this something that we’ll do somewhere down the road, but this time let’s just keep it true EARTH CRISIS.