Earth Crisis - Destroy the Machines (1995)^{Release ID: 4993}

I really want to hate Earth Crisis. I hate their vegan straight edge attitude, I hate their preachy lyrics even more.

It's not like they have one of greatest albums in the history of extreme music. It's not like they perfectly mix their signatures chugs with a groove metal and doom-esque riffs to create songs that fill me with equal amounts of anger and despair. It's not like Scott Crouse and Dennis Merrick combine for a rhythm master class that makes me want to mosh and burn down my local meat processing plant at the same time. No, it's always gonna be about their lyrics and their cringe social messaging. 

Well, i would say this, if they didn't release this album, which only proves me wrong time and time again.

Fuck Earth Crisis.

Throughout the past nearly 30 years of metalcore, one of the most influential bands is Earth Crisis. This band is fighting against animal rights issues and drug abuse in their lyrics. While the Firestorm EP solidified their signature metalcore sound in the same level as Integrity, their debut album is where they continue that journey!

Metal and hardcore have been two of the heaviest rock styles out there, but early 90s bands like Earth Crisis helped break the divisive walls between the two. If pure fans of each genre thought one shouldn't co-exist with the other, Earth Crisis proved them wrong by doing their part in bringing together those two scenes. While the Firestorm EP stabilized their foundation of raging riffs and substance-free lyrics, Destroy The Machines brought them higher underground fame, influencing many metal/hardcore bands.

For a brilliant metalcore opener, listen to "Forced March", showing you what the album is gonna be about. It was later covered by Between the Buried and Me in their own cover album. Up next is the introspective blast of "Born From Pain" with heavy weight in the music and lyrics. It was also recently covered by Eighteen Visions in their own cover album. The title track calls out with more rage than Rage Against the Machine. The mid-paced "New Ethic" stomps right through like the fiercest plant-eating dinosaur. A prime example of groove metalcore in that song!

The one track I would consider weak is "The Discipline". It just can't match the power of their EP's title track! Luckily it doesn't detract any perfection from the album. The groove track "Deliverance" is one of those songs that, no matter how bands try to rip it off, always stays original. "Inherit the Wasteland" keeps you in attention with solid drum bounce. The bass is placed perfectly on top of the guitars for some great groove.

"Asphyxiate" has a mid-paced sludge-ish sound that would make you think of Asphyx gone metalcore. "The Wrath of Sanity" touches my metal heart the most of all hardcore-oriented tracks with probably the best breakdown of that genre. Switching around the tempo is "Fortress", one last building-shaking metallic hardcore track.

Earth Crisis is, in my opinion, more underrated than Integrity when it comes to the metalcore pioneering game, with Destroy the Machines bringing hope to the future of the metalcore realms. Even rarer back then was the ability to mix the genre with a groove metal attack. Their record label Victory would become one of the best-known record labels in metal/hardcore, helping out the band in the earliest years for both. Destroy the Machines is essential listening for all metalcore fans, past, present, and future!

Favorites: "Forced March", "Born From Pain", "New Ethic", "Inherit the Wasteland", "The Wrath of Sanity"

8/10