La reformation de EARTH CRISIS et la sortie du nouvel album de FREYA etait une trop belle occasion pour s'entretenit avec Karl Buechner le chanteur des 2 groupes !

Could you please give us some infos about this first show in Baltimore ?
Karl: The response at Maryland Metalfest was incredible and all the bands we played with were awesome. I was there the whole day and got to see every band. Thanks to everyone who travelled, it was seriously a perfect day.

Is Earth Crisis back for good in 2007 or is it just a reunion tour ? What's Earth Crisis planning for the next weeks, months, years ?
Karl: We recently released a new Path CD ''Can't Stop The Truth'' and we've headlined festivals in the U.S. and in Europe last year. This January our other band Freya released a new album called Lift The Curse. We just returned from tour dates with Sworn Enemy and Kataklysm here in the states.

So between the two bands we are very busy. We are going to play some EC reunion shows when the opurtunity arises and things won't conflict. EC is headlining a festival in California this May and weeks worth of shows in Europe in June. Freya will most likely tour with Damnation next.

For which reasons is Earth Crisis back in 2007 ? Are the reasons which made Earth Crisis breaked up in 2002 not valid anymore ?
Karl: Scott had moved back to the east coast from California where he had been living and singing for his band Isolated and running his own recording studio called the Sweat Shop. So the timing is right and we all live close enough together to make it work.

When you see all you did with Earth Crisis, what are the things you're really pround of ? and what do you regret ?
Karl: There is nothing to regret when I consider that EC was the world's first Vegan/Straight-Edge band and now there are dozens in different parts of the world who believe basically the same things and are motivating the people they reach with the truth.

I did some interviews recently with some european metalcore bands like Heaven Shall Burn or Maroon. They all mentioned Earth Crisis as one their main influence musically and lyrically. They even said that Earth Crisis influenced them in their personnal ch
Karl: I love all of the European Vegan/Straight-Edge, all of those guys have proved to be great musicians.

Let's talk about Freya now. The first release was well received by critics and fans and it sounded like the logical next step after "Slither". What are you thinking about this cd today ?
Karl: That album accomplished a lot of great things for Freya. We had a video on Headbangers Ball on MTV we were on terrestrial and sattelite radio as well.

2 years later, Freya released a split cd with Hoods where the Freya songs were really different from the first cd with no clean vocals, coming back with a mix of the darkest elements of hardcore and metal. What happens between this 2 releases that would e
Karl: When we added up Slither and Last Of The Sane with EC and Last Light Drains with Freya we had our fill of experimenting with adding melodicism into our overall heavy sound.

In 2007, Freay is finally back with a brand new cd. Can you tell us more about it, the recordings sessions, the songs etc ?
Karl: The lyrical theme is about mans inhumanity to man through warfare.

We took two years to craft the songs and recorded with our friend Dean at his studio Atomic in Brooklyn. The sessions went very smoothly and it felt sort of like a vacation.

The songs on this Cd are in the same vein a the Hoods split, there is only 1 song with clean volcals. Why did you make this choice ?
Karl: The only song that felt like it should have a part where there was clean singing was Lilith. That song shaped itself as it went along. The radio single that Victory is pushing is actually the heaviest track on the disc ''Suffer Not One''. Going back to the straight forward approach where everything is darkened in and ultra aggressive felt and feels very natural for us. Adding the melodicism in, at the time when we did kept things fresh for us as songwriters.

Freya sounds really different from Earth Crisis, do you keep that in mind that you should sound different to your previous band, when you write stuff for Freya ?
Karl: Erick, Ethan and I have been the nucleus of the band for awhile now.
Ethan joined us after his experimental metal band The Last Season broke up.
So there is different people writing music. For those who like EC's guitar work thank Scott, he wrote 95% of everything.

The cover artwork of your cd is really special ? What does it represent for you ? Is there a message/concept behind it ?
Karl: Lift The Curse traces a timeline from Eden to Armeggedon. It sickening to me that brilliant scientists are inventing space craft that are exploring the solar system and at the same time demons who have betrayed the family of mankind are chopping off peoples heads and throwing rocks at them in a mob at the same time.

Lets' talk about the lyrics, again there is nothing about being straight edge or vegan, are you still involved in this movement ?
Karl: With Freya there is a mixture of musicians from different backgrounds. Our band forwards different mainstream animal rights issues that everyone can agree on. Everyone in Path is 200% VSE and thats what Can't Stop The Truth is about from start to finish. So we have our full force VSE band. So far Freya has had a video made by Peta2 for our anti vivisection song Struggle To Survive. Over 100,000 DVD's that featured that video were distributed on the Warped Tour. On Lift The Curse the song Down To The Last is about the resurgence of commercial whaling. The lyrical approach we take with Freya on these songs makes it different from the ones that we have with both EC and Path. The words are from the animals perspective that are being tortured and hunted.

There are a lot of reference to imagery from the Norse Myths in Karl's lyrics. From where is coming all thie reference to norse culture ?
Karl: I've been interested in Norse, Celtic, and Native American mythology since I was in fifth grade. The stories are timeless, the settings are beautiful so they make an excellent source to draw from.

In 2007, how important is for you this possibility of creating, playing & publishing your own music?
Karl: Music is our lives.