SilentScream213 After the fantastic debut, Brutal Truth return with a follow up that is much less one dimensional, but also less consistent. In opposition to the near constant pure Deathgrind pummeling on the debut, Need to Control features some slower songs, some straight Grindcore, and a decent amount of Noise influence on a few tracks, with some being pure Industrial/Noise.

The opening track is a pretty big surprise from the band, being akin to a Death Doom sound and really slowing down their formula, but it pulls this off rather well. The album continues to flow between their signature Deathgrind and the other influences I mentioned above. One huge issue with this album is that most of the experimentation is not as great as the Deathgrind, and the Deathgrind on this one just doesn’t match up to their debut.

Ultimately, there’s nothing on this I’d rather hear than the debut. The inclusion of other sounds and experimentation might pay off as growth later, but here it’s not fully realized, leaving the album inconsistent.

SilentScream213 Yes! Finally! A band takes the potential of Grindcore and uses it right!

Brutal Truth’s debut is full of extreme high-energy tracks stock full of insane riffage! There is a huge Death/Thrash influence to this thing, and the riffs are super evil sounding despite the wholly political nature of the album. And thank goodness, for once a Grindcore vocalist enunciates, those politically charged lyrics are easy to follow. The vocals aren’t really special in themselves but they get credit for doing what 95% of Grindcore can’t by being god damn intelligible.

The real sauce here is the musicianship, and holy hell these guys can play. I mentioned the riffage earlier, and it is air-tight. Guitar and bass shred along at insane speeds, ripping off the best riffs I’ve heard in the genre yet. The drumming is inhuman, the blast-beats are probably the fastest I’ve heard yet, and actually manage to be on-time (if not incredibly precise). However, the drums are usually not so much sonic aggression as to drown out the tasty riffs, and the guy knows when to play extreme and when to serve the music. Huge plus!

Incredibly awesome Deathgrind and my personal favorite Grindcore album as of its release.

UMUR "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" is the 3rd full-length studio album by US grindcore act Brutal Truth. The album was released through Relapse Records in September 1997. The band´s first two albums were released through Earache Records, but "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" is not their first release on Relapse Records after their label change, as they released the "Kill Trend Suicide" MCH/EP in 1996 through the new label. This would be their last studio album before they split-up the first time and a longer hiatus followed before they reunited in 2006.

Compared to "Need to Control (1993)", "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" is a rather different sounding release, but if you´re familiar with "Kill Trend Suicide (1996)", the sound on "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" isn´t quite as surprising. The tight precision and more clinical sound of "Need to Control (1993)" is replaced here by a more laid back, organic and muddy sounding version of Brutal Truth. I´d even say it´s psychadelic tinged at times ("Jemenez Cricket" is the best example of that). Imagine that! Psychadelic grindcore...

...but Brutal Truth were always boundary pushers, and none of their albums are just "straight" blast beat grindcore (although there are loads of blast beats in their music). While not all 22 tracks on the 74:14 minutes long album (the last almost 20 minutes of the album is just an annoying loop) stand out equally much, Brutal Truth are pretty good at varying pace and incorporating elements from other genres like psychadelic rock, industrial, and death metal to their grindcore style. This ensures that "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" is an album that´s worth listening to again and again. It does overstay it´s welcome a bit though, and I would have prefered a 40 minutes long album, which I feel would have been a more suitable length for music this extreme.

The album is packed in an organic but also pretty muddy sound production, where the drums sometimes drown and it´s not always clear what´s being played. It has it´s charm but I do prefer the more clear and clinical sounding production on "Need to Control (1993)".

With "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom", Brutal Truth confirmed once again that they were not a stagnant act releasing the same album over and over again. They evolved and experimented with their sound and they still stand as one of the most innovative grindcore acts on the scene. Quality wise I prefer the predecessor, which I still feel is one of the most groundbreaking grindcore releases out there, but "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" is also overall a quality release featuring a unique take on grindcore and despite a few flaws (it´s too long and the sound production is muddy) a 3.5 star (70%) rating is still deserved.

Vim Fuego Not every band lives up to its name. Extreme was anything but extreme. Danger Danger was quite safe. Brutal Truth lived up to its name in every way possible. This album is brutal as all fuck, and some of the messages it contains are so true it hurts. Put together by former Anthrax/SOD/Nuclear Assault/insert-huge-list-of-bands-here bassist Dan Lilker and mental hospital outpatient and sometimes journalist Kevin Sharpe, most people thought the band a bit of a gimmick to start with, banking on Lilker’s previous experience. No one expected anything quite so deeply rooted in Grindcore. Drummer Scott Lewis had formerly played for the legendary Winter, the enigmatic late 80s Doom band which played at a glacial pace, so he wasn’t expected to keep up the pace for a Grindcore band. However, Lilker and Sharpe had been studying Japanese Hardcore in some detail, while Sharpe had a liking for power tools. The combination proved deadly. Y’see, Japanese Hardcore isn’t like your everyday garden variety Hardcore. It’s not all about burly, sweaty bald men covered in tattoos yelling about unity and vegetarianism. Japanese Hardcore is utterly insane, played so fast, as Sharpe once put it, you need to hold your nuts in a sling. Sounds painful... As for the power tools, Sharpe liked attacking pieces of metal with angle grinders and hammers and recording the resulting racket. There’s a definite Metal vibe right from the start of ‘Birth Of Ignorance’, with the guitar tone, Kevin Sharpe’s growl, the double kick drum rumble, and then the blast beats. This could be put down to Colin Richardson’s production. After all, he’s the man who brought out the metal in Carcass and even crusty Punks The Exploited. However, this is Grindcore, not Metal. Sharpe pulls out the screaming demon vocals to go with the death grunt, and there’s no time for any superfluous solos or leads or drum fills. Second song ‘Stench of Prophet’ is where things really get grinding. Scott Lewis out-blasts the rest of the band with consummate ease. Dan Lilker’s dirty distorted bass makes its presence well and truly known, grumbling so low it upsets seismographs. The riffing is sharp and simple. The overall effect is very clear and intense sounding, at a time when many Grindcore outfits were drowned in distortion and fuzz. A few tracks stand out above the others. Clocking in at around a minute and a half long, ‘Walking Corpse’ is a song built around three incredible bursts of hyper-blastbeat energy. Rather than being a literal tale of zombies and the walking dead, Sharpe rails against the repetitive pointlessness of the nine-to-five existence. It also includes a memorable sample intro of a distressed voice saying “I hope you make sure we’re properly dead before you start...” ‘Wilt’ is another blast-abusing song, which also has a memorable intro, this time Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan: “Do you believe in God?” “I believe in myself.” It aims at evangelical religion, an easy but always worthwhile target. It starts with a slow, menacing riff, which pops up between the blasts throughout the song. ‘Anti-Homophobe’ was originally misinterpreted by a number of fans as an anti-homosexuality song. It’s as much anti-prejudice as it is pro-gay, but it’s all aggression. There’s also a small matter of a world record included on this album, all 2.18 seconds of it. ‘Collateral Damage’ is a musical marathon alongside Napalm Death’s 0.75 second ‘You Suffer’, but it holds the record for the world’s shortest music video. You could watch it 82 times in the space of the average three minute music video. This isn’t an album where the listener can get bored easily. So much flies past so quickly your subconscious attention shifts from one idea to the next, hoping you can keep up. The political lyrics and the powerful imagery of the cover are highly thought provoking, and a little easier to comprehend than the music. It is also reasonably easy for the average Metal fan to stomach. Alongside Carcass’ ‘Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious’, ‘Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses’ helped set a new standard for Grindcore, paving the way for outfits like Discordance Axis and Nasum. Grindcore need not be slipshod and amateurish, it could be tight and clear, and Metal fans could listen to it without feeling alienated.

UMUR "End Time" is the 5th full-length studio album by US grindcore act Brutal Truth. The album was released through Relapse Records in September 2011. It´s the second album by Brutal Truth since they returned with "Evolution Through Revolution (2009)" after a longer hiatus.

While the music on the album is rooted in grindcore aestethics and stylistic elements like extensive use of blastbeats and crusty hardcore riffs, "End Time" far exceeds the boundaries of what you usually hear when you put on a grindcore album. The riffs are dissonant and noisy and the drumming quirky and rhythmically complex. The band also play around with slower industrial influenced elements which can be heard on the opening track "Malice". The musicianship are on a high level, with precision playing and some really powerful and relatively varied vocals by Kevin Sharp. This is what I´d call clever and adventurous grindcore. Brutal Truth were always boundary pushers, and they still are.

Most of the 23 tracks on the 54:36 minutes long album are around 1 - 2 minutes long but "Control Room" which closes the album, sticks out a bit with it´s 15:21 minutes of playing time. It´s quite the noisy and repetitive track and it doesn´t take long before it feels unneccesarily long. It´s the kind of track you listen to once and then skip every other time you take the album out for a spin unless of course you are one of those rare folks who actually enjoy this kind of thing. The rest of the tracks are highly entertaining and Brutal Truth have made sure that while they relentlessly kick your ass they also bend your mind. "End Time" also features a powerful and raw sound production and all things considered it´s another challenging high quality grindcore album from one of the leaders of the genre. Despite the unneccesarily long "Control Room" a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.