California Takeover

Earth Crisis, Snapcase & Strife prep 'Return of the California Takeover' (olive vinyl, streams)

Pre-order our limited olive green vinyl variant of ‘The Return Of The California Takeover.’

Back in 1996, hardcore bands Earth Crisis, Snapcase, and Strife went on the California Takeover tour and immortalized it with the now-classic live album The California Takeover… Live. They did it again in February of 2020, and now that tour is getting a live album too, The Return Of The California Takeover, due November 19 via Strife guitarist Andrew Kline’s WAR Records.

The album was recorded live at LA’s Teragram Ballroom on February 23, 2020. It was produced by Aaron Bruno of Awolnation; co-produced, engineered, and mixed by Eric Stenman; and mastered by Arthur Rizk. We’ve teamed with WAR on a limited olive green vinyl variant available now in our stores. It also comes with a 24 X 36 poster. Pre-order yours here while they last. Here’s a mock-up of the variant and the poster:

California Takeover

Takeover Poster

Along with the announcement, we’re premiering one track from each band: Earth Crisis’ “Forged in the Flames,” Snapcase’s “Zombie Prescription,” and Strife’s “Force of Change.” Listen to all three below. Members of all three bands also answered some questions about the compilation and these songs in particular, and you can read on for what they had to say.

The East Coast edition of The Return Of The California Takeover happens in May of 2022 with one Buffalo show and two Philly shows. More info and tour poster below.

STRIFE: ANDREW KLINE

Strife, Earth Crisis, and Snapcase, have been playing shows together since the mid 90’s. How did it feel reconnecting and sharing the stage with old friends for The Return of The California Takeover?

The three of us have played so many shows together over the years… All three of us even played a show together in Josh Grabelle’s (Trustkill Records) basement back in the mid nineties! It feels great to reconnect with old friends and have the opportunity to share the stage together again. To me hardcore has always been about the friendships you make and the community aspect of the scene. It amazing to see that so many people still care about our music and our message so many years later.

All three bands were incredibly important in the nineties and beyond. Was there any sort of competition between the bands?

I always felt inspired by both Snapcase and Earth Crisis. I think we would push each other to play harder, go off live even more, and really perfect our craft as musicians. There was never any real competition because each band sounded quite different from each other, and each band was putting their own twist on the Hardcore sound. But I always knew that when we played with either band we would have to give it our all!

Earth Crisis, Snapcase, and Strife will reunite once again in May of 2022 for The Return of The California Takeover East Coast. Can you tell us a little bit about these shows?

We originally had these shows scheduled for October of 2021, but the timing just didn’t seem right for shows of this scale. We really wanted to make sure all of the bands, their families, and the people in attendance were not at risk, so we decided to postpone the shows until 2022. We are all looking forward to getting back on stage, and we couldn’t be more excited!

SNAPCASE: DARYL TABERSKI

Snapcase, Earth Crisis, and Strife have been playing shows together since the mid 90’s. How did it feel reconnecting and sharing the stage with old friends for The Return of The California Takeover?

It was truly great to reconnect with both of these bands, just to hang out and have some laughs together. It’s also amazing to share the stage with 2 bands that inspire you to play harder and bring everything you got! There are just those bands that your band connects with and that relationship breeds a healthy competition to push things a little bit further in your performance.

Aaron Bruno from Awolnation produced the record along with Eric Stenman. He also performs “Drain Me” with Snapcase on the album. How did you first meet Aaron, and how did he get involved in this project?

We first met Aaron in the mid 90’s when his hardcore band called Insurgence opened a number of our West Coast dates, our bands became friends and we’ve re-connected multiple times over the years since with different bands that Aaron has been in. It was an honor to have Aaron join the stage with us since we have this bond going back 25 years and also because he’s such a talented musician. Aaron’s roots are in hardcore amongst other things and he was psyched to get up there with us too!

We are premiering “Zombie Prescription”… Can you tell us a little bit about this song?

“Zombie Prescription” was a song that we wrote in 1996 while at Trax East Studio with Steve Evetts during recording sessions for Progression Through Unlearning. We showed up to record that album but still needed a couple more songs and put Zombie Prescription together during some rehearsals in the studio. It’s a song that truly connects our classic sound along with our love of early 90’s Helmet. It instantly became a powerful song for us to perform live too!

EARTH CRISIS: SCOTT CROUSE

Earth Crisis, Snapcase, and Strife have been playing shows together since the mid 90’s. How did it feel reconnecting and sharing the stage with old friends for The Return of The California Takeover?

It was a blast, but at the same time, we’ve stayed in touch throughout the years. We’ve run into each other at Festivals and I (Scott) lived near LA for sometime, so I’d run into Andrew from Strife here and there. Dennis is very close with Tim Redmond from Snapcase as well. We’ve stayed in each others orbit to an extent, but it was very nice catching up with a few of the other members I hadn’t seen in some time.

Earth Crisis has released 8 studio albums. How do you decide which songs will make the set for a show like this?

At this point we’ve figured out which songs are set list staples mainly through a lot of trial and error. We always have a selfish song or two we throw in, but know it won’t necessarily go over well. Songs like “Wrath of Sanity,” “Gommorah’s Season,” “Forged In The Flames,” and of course “Firestorm,” need to be in there.

“Forged in The Flames” was originally released back in 1993 on the Firestorm 7″. How does the live version on The Return of The California Takeover compare to the studio version?

I think most bands’ songs continue to evolve the more you play them. There’s always a small thing here or there that you start doing live and wish you thought of when you were recording it. That’s bound to happen. Recording is really just a snapshot in time of a song, they always continue to grow the more you play them. As for Forged in the Flames specifically, I’m not exactly sure what we do differently as I haven’t listened to the original in years. I’m sure there are a handful of small things though.

California Takeover

Tracklist
1. Earth Crisis – Forged In The Flames
2. Earth Crisis – Constrict
3. Snapcase – Incarnation
4. Snapcase – Zombie Prescription
5. Strife – Waiting
6. Strife – Stand As One
7. Snapcase – Drain Me
8. Snapcase – Caboose
9. Strife – Lift
10. Strife – Force Of Change
11. Earth Crisis – To Ashes
12. Earth Crisis – Born From Pain

California East Coast Takeover

The Return Of The California Takeover East Coast Tour Dates
5/13/22 – Buffalo, NY – The Town Ballroom
5/14/22 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
5/15/22 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts

Pre-order our limited olive green vinyl variant here.

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