EARTH CRISIS

Straight Edge warriors strike back

- How would you describe the meaning of album's title? Is it a kind of statement of how long you will follow your ideas?
It is. It’s a lot of things. To me and I think to all of us it’s that there’s a lot of bands that come back nowadays and there’s a lot of reunions. For us it’s a little bit hard thing when straight edge bands whoch had some ideals and after they come back it’s quite obvious that they don’t really believe those things anymore. They want to play some shows and earn some money. We wanted to let everybody know that we are same people that we were in the 90s. We’re still vegans, we’re still all straight edge. The only difference now is that we are little bit older. Ha.. ha.. It’s a statement that we’re still the same people and we still believe the same core ideals and morals.

- Your connections with straight edge ideology are obvious. You've managed to spread your message even outside the HC scene.
Those are accomplishments that Karl has done. He’s been spoken before Congress, he was invited to a numerous TV shows that aren’t even musical like talk shows or education programs. He’s been fortunate to do some really cool things that aren’t even music related. I think that in the future he’s going to do things like that too. It’s great and perfect when you have a marriage of a really good music and really solid lyrics and ideale behind it. We are very reasonable people. We are not militant. Maybe lyrically we are, but in our personal lives we’re reasonable people.We don’t expect all the straight edge people to like our band. We don’t expect all the vegan people to like our band. We want to present those ideale to people who may be looking for some change in their lives. But it doesn’t also bother me when someone likes our music and doesn’t pay any attention to our music. I think that even if someone doesn’t agree with the lyrics, he will respect the ideals behind them. I think that heavy, aggressive sound drives a lot of people to the band, and I think that even if they don’t agree with our lyrics they’ll find something because of the anger and frustration in our lyrics.

- There are some people who definitely follow your ideas. I’ve heard about a guy who tattooed your logo on his face. Did you have a chance to meet him?
You can go to our MySpace page there are some pictures of him. Unfortunately we didn’t met him. We’ve tried for few times. Some our friends from a band TERROR have met him and said that he was really quiet and nice guy. I believe that it was in Denmark. I’d love to meet him and I’ve said it few times before: if he ever would go to any of our shows, obviously he can go there for free.

-You stand for animal rights. Since the band's beginnings you've written songs about "Unseen Holocaust". Do you think that today more people are aware of those problems?
Abslutely. I think that that thing like veganism is much more widely accepted nowadays then it was when we started out. It seems to be growing over there as well. You go to every restaurant and there’s no problem when you say: I’d like to make it vegan. When we started to do it as a kids, people had no idea what it meant. Now it’s pretty widely accepted. Here in California they’ve just passe the bill which forces more human treatment at fur or factory farms. It’s a huge victory. It lets people know. It sends the message that there are people who do care about what happens there. Of course there are animals that are going to be a food. But there are people who don’t want them to be treated in a harmful way to the point when they’re unfortunately slaughtered. We’d like it to be diminished. But it’s a pretty big thing for animal rights community.

- Btw what do you think of violence as a weapon used in fight against such things and persons like: fur farms, drug dealers etc?
I think it depends on what times of violence you mean. If you talk about something like Animal Liberation Front, then yeah absolutely we would support those groups. If it is something like individual attacking individual because he doesn’t eat meat or he’s smoking cigarettes we do not absolutely support. I think that people do label groups like ALF as extremists but I’d like anybody to see a video of a vivisection or from a slaughterhouse, those actions are really extreme. So it’s gonna take extremes to stop extremes. Violence is the only language that vivisector understands, because it is something that he deals with it day in and day out. Somebody holding a sign on the street or does a lot to make people aware, but he’s not stoping what’s going on inside. So EARTH CRISIS in 100 percent supports acts like that.

-"To The Death" is your first album released by CENTURY MEDIA. What convinced you to sign that deal with that label?
It didn’t take a much of convincing at all. We were working with VICTORY for years. And during that time Robert from CENTURY MEDIA has always showed some interest in our band. We were close to have a deal with CM few times in the past. Actually when we eventually went to the ROADRUNNER, we were looking strongly at CM, and when we were back from RR to VICTORY once again we were looking strongly at CENTURY MEDIA. And when we decided to work on the new album they showed their interest immediately and they were first label that got in contact with us. They’ve said: is it going to be a new record? We wanna be involved. This time it seemed to make more sense. I don’t really see EARTH CRISIS fitting in a label like VICTORY anymore. We respect that label. But there are many kids, and I don’t think that EA soundwise really fits in that label. With CENTURY MEDIA we are more connected not only musically, but also ethically. I know that singer from ARCH ENEMY is vegan. Also the vocalist from THE AGONIST is vegan too. It just seemed like the more comfortable place for us.

-It's your second deal with more metal-oriented label. In 1998 yoy've released "Breed The Killers" under ROADRUNNER's flag. Why didn’t it work then – you’ve decided to go back to VICTORY - and aren't you afraid that there's a risk that something may go wrong again?
ROADRUNNER was a different thing. When we signed with them they were in a very transitional phase, they were going to their NICKELBACK thing, which they’re still in. They were realising that they’ll become more of the TOP 40 kind of mainstream rock label. And EARTH CRISIS didn’t fit in the plan of the attack that they’ve had. We were done before even the album came out. CENTURY MEDIA they’ve always been true to the things they’ve started at. They don’t try to jump at new trends. They’re not trying to became a top rock label. They have some crossover rock bands for sure but they’re still true to the core ideals. I feel more comfortable with labels like ROADRUNNER or CENTURY MEDIA then with more hard core oriented labels. I myself first identified more with the metal then a hard core. What I got from the hard core is ethics and sort of the beliefs that I have. But when it comes to the sound I always been more metal fan. When I was 8 years old I wanted to be Eddie van Halen. Then the biggest band for me was METALLICA. I was about 10 or 11 when I figured out how to play their songs. There are some many bands that I really like. I’m influenced by so many different kinds of music. I listen to PRINCE and also to CHILDREN OF BODOM. I really like anything that’s good.

- Short before your re-union in 2007 Karl said that he'd love to re-record one or even all of your old albums. Are there any plans or even talks with CENTURY MEDIA to do it?
I think that there’s such a option. I personalny would like to do something like that. The only issue is that there’s a lot of work to do businesswise. A lot of that material is on VICTORY there are copyright issues and things like that. It’s not something that we would eagerly do right now, but maybe once the touring for this record is done it might be something that we’ll looking at little more. I’d like to release an album with some of the stongest songs from each one of our past records.

www.myspace.com/earthcrisis

Line-Up:
Karl Buechner - vocals
Scott Crouse - guitar
Ian "Bulldog" Edwards - bass
Dennis Merrick - drums
Erick Edwards - guitar

Discography:
All Out War (EP) (1992)
Firestorm (EP) (1993)
Destroy the Machines (1995)
Gomorrah's Season Ends (1996)
The California Takeover (Live) (1996)
The Oath That Keeps Me Free (Live) (1998)
Breed the Killers (1998)
Slither (2000)
Last of the Sane (2001)
Forever True - 1991-2001 (best of) (2006)
To The Death (2009)