Take Offense - T.O.TALITY CD

Unlike the legions who attempt to reinvent crossover for modern times, Take Offense looks toward the tone and attitude of their Californiacounterparts– bands like Cryptic Slaughter, EXCEL, and Suicidal Tendencies, who also leaned heavily into skate aesthetics but worshipped SunsetStrip-and-adjacent guitar deities like George Lynch, Warren Di Martini, and Eddie Van Halen. T.O.tality is a love letter to that scene and those times,delivered in the form of an armada of fourteen nitro-equipped armored vehicles, exploding through barricades of genre convention and emptying theclip with fresh ideas. It’s a tribute to local heroes with familiar approaches that are wholly and undoubtedly Take Offense. “There are sounds andtones that have influenced me heavily, and part of that came out of 1980s California,” says Greg Cerwonka emphatically. “The guitar sound, especiallyfor bands coming out of Venice Beach where some of that great crossover came from, has roots in hair metal– they were surrounded by it. So whilecrossover is definitely a different style and sound, what some of those hair metal guitarists did is undeniable– we try and incorporate that in a waythat makes sense for us.”