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.

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 "Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses" is the debut full-length studio album by US grindcore act Brutal Truth. The album was released through Earache Records in October 1992. Brutal Truth were formed by former Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, and S.O.D. bassist Dan Lilker who left Nuclear Assault after the recording of "Out of Order (1991)" as a consequence of internal turmoil within that band. Dan Lilker´s involvement in a brutal grindcore act like Brutal Truth might have surprised some at the time but for those who knew about his involvement in S.O.D. and the "Speak English or Die (1985)" album it didn´t come as such a big surprise that Dan Lilker also loved aggressive hardcore influenced music. It´s worth mentioning that "Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses" spawned two music videos for the tracks "Collateral Damage" (a 4 seconds long video) "Ill Neglect".

Stylistically the music on "Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses" is grindcore with death metal elements. The vocals by Kevin Sharpe are mostly deep death grunts but he also masters a higher pitched screaming vocal style which result in the vocals being pretty varied for the style. The music of course features tons of blast beats but again there are variations in pace which means that the album isn´t one long blast beat fest. There are many mid-paced to fast sections on the album too, so rhythmically the album is also a relatively varied listen.

The tracks are generally pretty short but there are also a couple of longer tracks on the album. Featuring 15 tracks (the 1995 reissue features 3 bonus tracks) and a full playing time of 45:04 minutes the album isn´t too long which is always a danger with music this extreme. Brutal Truth manage to strike the right balance between being relentlessly aggressive and brutal but not become one-dimensional or monotone. The exception is the 10:51 minutes long closing track "Unjust Compromise", which features 5 minutes of silence (after the almost 6 minutes of music that preceeds it) before a 11 seconds long hidden track ends the album. Silent endings to albums are always a waste of the listener´s time (and money) and in my book it always devaluates a product when a band opts to include them. Why on earth would you want to annoy your audience? That aside the rest of the material and the flow of the album are pretty great.

The individual musicianship on the album is impeccable and together Brutal Truth are a tight playing unit. The Colin Richardson production is well sounding for the period and raw and powerful to boot. There´s no arguing that "Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses" is a classic grindcore release (although it´s not necessarily original) and it´s one of those albums that´s a mandatory listen, if you´re interested in grindcore with death metal elements. It´s at the same time a promising debut album for Brutal Truth that instantly put them on the grindcore map of the 90s. It´s not completely without flaws though (I mentioned the annoying silent ending above, and the lack of an original sound isn´t a plus in my book either) and therefore a 3.5 (70%) rating is fair.