Brutal Truth
It only took the better part of the last decade, but Brutal Truth are officially unfrozen, undead and unleashed. Decibel skips through the green grass and high times with grind’s most advanced primates.
The words hang in the air like the pot smoke around Rich Hoak’s head. He says this emphatically at the top of the stairwell to his basement grind laboratory in Philadelphia—as emphatically as someone who tells us he just finished smoking “a fat blunt” possibly can. But Hoak is the drummer for Brutal Truth, the band that coined, embraced and made extensive use of the slogan “Smoke. Grind. Sleep,” so we’re not exactly buying it when he tries to sell us on the idea that the pot isn’t imperative to their philosophy or writing process. He senses this, perhaps, so he tries a different tack: “In the thousands of gigs that Brutal Truth has played, there have been maybe, I don’t know, eight, where we have not smoked weed before we played, and everything was exactly the same,” he insists. “We’ve sort of been backing away from that lately. Brutal Truth is not just a weed-smoking band. We’re guys who definitely like to party, but that’s the end-of-the-world celebration of grind-slash-underground culture.”
Brutal Truth have been celebrating the end of the world since 1990 or so—aside from an eight-year hiatus between ’98 and ’06—ever since bassist Dan Lilker started the band in his bedroom at his parents’ house in Queens, NY. The legacy they built before their untimely demise cannot be overstated. From the high-speed death groove of Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses (1992) to the avant-grind frenzy of dB Hall of Famer Need to Control (1994) and the feral convulsions of Sounds of the Animal Kingdom (1997), Brutal Truth consistently defied expectations by somehow managing to become both more visceral and experimental with each release. Fast forward to 2009: BT are back with a new guitarist, Erik Burke, and a new album, Evolution Through Revolution. And though we’ve often offered the unsolicited opinion that dead bands should stay dead where recording is concerned, we’re pleased to announce that Evolution Through Revolution delivers the fucking goods. Jim Welch, the man who signed Brutal Truth to Earache back in ’91, seconds that emotion: “If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t think they could play it live,” he enthuses. “But I saw them do it towards the end of last year, and it was ridiculous. Not to say that people haven’t taken music to other extremes since the band broke up, but when people hear the new record, they’ll realize that Brutal Truth have taken it somewhere else again. So, now people have to play catch-up again, and it’s amazing that the band is able to do that after taking a break for so long and changing a member.”
Of course, Brutal Truth haven’t been on Earache since 1995, but like two of the label’s other classic bands that have broken up and reformed—Carcass and At the Gates—BT’s stock has risen considerably during their time in the grave. “I was in London last year walking past the Astoria and saw that Brutal Truth were headlining,” Welch offers. “I was like, ‘Whoa!’ They definitely never headlined the Astoria before they broke up. I mean, 2,500 people in London. That’s serious.”
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