Destroy the Machines is the debut studio album by American metalcore band Earth Crisis, it was released in 1995.[2] It is widely considered a landmark release in metalcore.
Music and lyrics
Earth Crisis recorded Destroy the Machines in the studio of progressive thrash metal band Believer in Pennsylvania, being introduced to them by friend Jim Winters of Conviction, who also toured with Earth Crisis. Guitarist Scott Crouse, who admired Believer, was inspired by them to practice arduously and improve his technique. On the album, the band determined to make the songs sound like "somebody continuously hitting something with a hammer", picturing every song as "pounding, pounding, [and] pounding."[3]MetalSucks described Destroy the Machines as a "hardcore take on the Pantera/Exhorder/Prong school of late 80s-early 90s power groove thrash".[4]
Commenting on the lyrics, Allmusic stated that "[they] burn with resentment directed at those who (in the estimation of vocalist Karl Buechner) bring contamination and death to the earth and the defenseless creatures that reside on it."[1] The overall theme is an approaching ecological apocalypse, the destruction of defenseless creatures, self-destruction, and a means of liberation which is proposed as being veganism and straight edge.[5] By the time of the tour in 1995, Buechner was personally taking care of twelve rescued animals from Syracuse Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, where he volunteered.[6]
Legacy
In April 2018, NME named Destroy the Machines one of the fifteen best hardcore punk albums of all time.[7]Kerrang! placed it among "The 21 Best U.S. Metalcore Albums of All Time."[8] In 2017, Loudwire ranked Destroy the Machines 7th on its list of the best metalcore albums of all time.[9] Dan Gump of Life Sentence Records named it the most representative album of the 1990s.[10]
An increase of animal rights activism corresponded with the rise of vegan straight edge bands during the 1990s,[20] a phenomenon which activist Peter Daniel Young attributes largely to Destroy the Machines.[13]
^Granholm, Kennet (May 2012). "3 - Metal, The End of the World, and Radical Environmentalism: Ecological Apocalypse in the Lyrics of Earth Crisis". In Partridge, Christopher (ed.). Anthems of Apocalypse: Popular Music and Apocalyptic Thought. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 27–44. doi:10.4000/volume.3350. ISBN9781907534348.