New album displays band's improvement

By Kyle Boggs
Staff Writer

Earth Crisis has come a long way since the release of its first album eight years ago. The latest album, "Slither," claims to be the album that will break the band into the mainstream.

Earth Crisis has toured with such bands as Sepultura, the Misfits, and Downset and appeared at the original Ozzfest in 1996.

The band does more than just make industrial, aggressive metal; it is quite political as well. Lead vocalist Karl Buechner has spoken in front of the U.S. Congress about teens and substance abuse.

The band takes pride in the fact that it is a drug free band, a characteristic that is often hard to find in today's punk/hardcore metal music scene.

"Slither" sounds different than other albums that Earth Crisis has produced. Much of its old albums lack harmony and coherence. In the past, Buechner's voice is often hard to understand over the crunching guitar and powerful riffs.

The new album contains songs with distinctive and addictive choruses. The guitar work on "Slither" makes much more sense than in the past.

Songs with these well-placed choruses include songs such as "Nemesis," and "Arc of Descent" where the choruses shine through the guitar like a light amongst the darkness of the music.

Guitarist Scott Crouse is remarkably talented. He knows when to play a bit slower and a bit more harmonic; then he knows when to display an explosion of aggression through his music as well.

Buechner’s maniacal growls, along with the band’s bass-driven power, easily portray the group’s aggression, emotion and passion for what it is doing.

Earth Crisis can be compared to P.O.D., Coal Chamber, and Slipknot, but because Earth Crisis has been around longer than each of these, they claim to have paved the way for such bands.

A definite weakness found in "Slither" is in the lyrics. Many of the lyrics are dark and morbid. It's often hard to figure out what Buechner is yelling about and it is even more confusing when you read the lyrics.

"Escape/break free/evade the masters/not their’s to dominate/ overcome conditioning/realize time to escape.

The lyrics seem to "complain" about life and offer no solutions about anything Buechner is whining about.

The rhyming seems forced and the band tries too hard to portray these ideas that are too repetitive in music today.

It makes one wonder why the band doesn't write about the things that it stands for, such as its stance on teen drug abuse or its views on politics.

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