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.

J-Man End Time is the second album from legendary grindcore act Brutal Truth since their reformation in 2006, and their fifth album overall. This band from Rochester, New York helped put grindcore on the map nearly twenty years ago with their seminal debut, Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses, and their latest effort proves that they are still a relevant force in the extreme metal world. If you like your grindcore to be short and to-the-point, yet still with some room for experimentation, End Time should be one of the year's highlights. Fans of Brutal Truth won't be disappointed.

The music here is exactly what we've come to expect from Brutal Truth - an impenetrable wall of noise in the form of short songs, frantic vocals, and technically outstanding musicianship, all topped off with a raw production and pissed-off lyrics. End Time isn't the most original album out there, and I can also say that it isn't quite as musically impressive as some of the band's earlier works. That's not to say that End Time isn't a good grindcore record - it certainly is - it just tends to live more in the shadow of their earlier albums than as an artistic statement of its own. Most of the songs simply aren't all that memorable, and since the album is a whopping 55 minutes (way too long for your average grindcore album), it can feel quite monotonous towards the end. The 15 minutes of experimental noise in "Control Room" doesn't increase my enjoyment either.

End Time may not be the best that Brutal Truth has to offer, but it is still a solid effort that fans of the band will definitely want to track down. Even though the CD may overstay its welcome by more than a few minutes, there are a few songs here that are among the best in Brutal Truth's catalog. People looking for an effective punch in the face from some of the best musicians on the scene should definitely have a great time with End Time. I'd say 3 stars are deserved in this case. I don't think this album adds anything new to Brutal Truth's discography, but it does prove that they are still kicking ass over twenty years into their career!