Evolution Through Revolution

I am basically going to agree with gk and his review. I had very high hopes for this comeback, but this album is just ok. "Need to Control" is one of the best grind albums ever recorded, and "Extreme Conditions..." is an excellent death/grind album. No matter if the band themselves(well at least Lilker) consider "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" their best effort(directly from Lilker's mouth when I saw them at the Double Door in Chicago), I just don't agree.

This new album is somewhat a departure from all of their previous efforts which is fine by me, but it just doesn't work all that well. Burke's guitar playing is adequate as far as skill is concerned, but he does this squealy thing quite often and it just isn't doing it for me. Former axehand Gurn is sorely missed in my opinion. He was a fuckin whirlwind of a guitarist. Also, Sharpe was undoubtedly one of my favorite vocalists ever after hearing "Need to Control". His high pitched screaming was unreal. Nothing had ever been so chaotic & great. He lost that range on "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" and it is still missing on this release. Hoak & Lilker are both solid, but it's just not enough to keep this album from just being mediocre.

A few standout tracks on the album are "Powder Burn" (where Shape's vocals are different than on anything else he's ever done, but to my liking), "Lifer" which is a pretty intense and memorable song and "Afterworld" which is really catchy. Beyond that, though, I can't recall any of the other tracks. Not really a good sign considering there are twenty songs on the album.

Brutal Truth is a great band who are tight as hell considering the intensity of their music. I am also glad they have reunited, but "Evolution through Revolution" is their weakest release to date. I sure hope they stick around for another album and redeem themselves.

When news first broke of Brutal Truth getting back together a couple of years ago for some shows I was quite excited. Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses and Need to Control were both quite awesome grindcore albums and I’ve been a fan of the band for a long while. So I approached Evolution through Revolution with a fair amount of interest.

Right from album opener Sugardaddy, the band makes its intentions clear. The song is a hyper charged grind that throws in scatter shot riffs and Kevin Sharp’s screams and mixes it up with a bottom heavy sludge sound while keeping the tempo at light speed at all times. While impressive for the two and a half minutes that the song lasts for, it has very little recall value. The story remains the same for the first quarter of this album as it’s only on song six, Get a Therapist Save the World that the band manage to hit a memorable groove and that is achieved by a pretty cool interplay between manic speed and sludgy groove with Lilker pulling off a pretty cool bass line. Other highlights include the completely over the top grind of title song Evolution Through Revolution which has another bottom heavy groove that is more Napalm Death than Brutal Truth. Detached is more Soilent Green than anything Brutal Truth has ever done before and it works superbly with the sludge once again coming to the fore while Semi Automatic Carnation shows the band experimenting with drone and noise to create an atmosphere that’s unlike anything they’ve done before.

Evolution through Revolution is a bit of a change for the band. I guess this isn’t really the band that made Extreme Conditions… or Need to Control and that’s fair enough. It’s been a long while since those albums were made and this new version of Brutal Truth still has a few tricks up its sleeve from actually slowing down every now and again to flirting with noise and drone. At the same time, not all of it works. A lot of these songs have a faceless similarity to them that makes the album seem like one long exercise in redundancy. Also, at over 40 minutes and 20 songs there’s a lot of music on offer and not all of it is of high quality.

I guess fans of the band will like this and grindcore fans in general should eat this up but this really isn’t a very essential release for the rest of you. If you’ve never heard the band before, then check out either of the first two albums. At the end of the day I’m happy that Brutal Truth is back but after giving Evolution through Revolution a fair few listens I’m left with a slightly unsatisfied feeling.

Originally written for http://www.kvltsite.com