Halfway through a show on December 29th, 1992, a band
of lanky young guys in hoodies and striped baggy shirts set up and began a wall
of feedback. The singer yelled “put up your hoods!” and the place and band
exploded. What happened was monstrous. The energy level was off the charts and
provided me with one of the most strikingly incredible memories of the time; a
girl in a Real Skateboards long sleeve shirt straight up LEVELING dudes in the
pit. It was like bearing witness to the second coming- everything about the set
and the reaction it generated made me believe that the straight edge vegan revolution
was real. This was my introduction to Earth Crisis.
A few weeks later, a friend of mine tracked down a copy of
the “All Out War” ep. I sat in his room listening to it and it was literally
nothing like the band I had just seen. It lacked the insane energy and power
that had floored me and was kind of, well, flat. I joined Halfmast in the
summer of 1993 and the bass player, Bill, dubbed me a copy of some new Earth
Crisis stuff, which I recall he got from Mike Warden (Conquer the World
Records) and THAT WAS THE STUFF! It sounded like revolution to me: crazy,
exciting and dangerous. I listened to that dub at least a hundred times. Although
a watershed moment in hardcore, I thought the “Firestorm” ep paled in
comparison and at the Firestorm record release show that October, they were
just more tame than when I has seen them less than a year previous. I'm not
saying it was bad, it was good; the show just had a less urgent, more relaxed
vibe.
Since 1993, I've played shows with and seen Earth Crisis
many times, but nothing connected with me like that first show or the 1993
demo. When my friend Carl said he still had digitized files from a dub he
thinks got from Guav in 93 (he used to
do a ‘zine called Warmachine), I knew it had to be better than the stuff that’s
been out in the digital world for the past 10+ years. So here it is, cleaned up
as best I could, the 8 song 1993 Earth Crisis Demo. Oh yeah, “Time of Strife” from the structure
records comp, I digitized that last year, but did not include it here, as I'll
be adding that to the blog in the near future.
![Deadlock [Spokane, WA]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShxKvrk2KeaeBzkrq0i1ZY1DBA1eeU_wAITRB96WVCyFMTnEZSO0Xa3-CTomyrfO15irO-pBF6I8R2bgnRmfQI5IgZ39BksEJBb4sa-UgahjIrXPqVZLPTA0piTCemVY6JW4irVczHf0/s72-c/cover.jpg)
