Customer Reviews

Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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This is the second time I've purchased this CD. The first time I gave it to a kid to borrow, and never got it back. So, I was sitting here with some money to burn on music and decided that I needed to hear this album again. It brought back memories. I bought this album when it first came out, and went to see them play and was crushed both by the album and the live show. Brutal Truth were are still are one of the best grind core bands of all time. They stand right up there proudly with Napalm Death and Nasum.

Colin Richardson/Producer did an excellent job of thickening up the one guitar, one bass band. And Kevin Sharp's vocal performance was, at the time, both reverred and mocked. People thought he used too many effects, and others couldn't understand how he went from the extreme highs to the lows so well and so frequently. Part of that came from the fact that Dan Lilker also contributed vocally to this beast.

Overall ECDER is not their best album, but it's an insane way to start off. Get this album, then buy "Need to Control" for some REAL insane grind core.

Not every band lives up to its name. Extreme was anything but extreme. Danger Danger was quite safe. Brutal Truth lives up to its name in every way possible. This album is brutal as all hell, 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 every day 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 Goregrind sickos 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.

i love brutal truth & extreme conditions is my favorite of the four i own.i knew the songs had lyrics of course but never had to read them to enjoy them.i guess you would have to read them to know what he's saying most the time but who cares? this is as intense as it gets w/out getting flat out riddiculous & further more a must have for all you boy george fans. i'm an anti homophobe ,i have a gay uncle.i love gay people ,especialy lesbians......oh sorry this a cd review .....BUY IT IT JAMS!!!!!!

I'm not really a fan of Brutal Truth's brand of grindcore, with low-tuned guitars and constant blast beats, but there is a certain intelligence to it. And contrary to what some brainless bigot wrote in a review below, I think it took a lot of guts for a metal band to write a song like "Anti-Homophobe." In a genre so full of meaningless macho posturing, thoughtful lyrics like this are pretty refreshing. I agree completely with what the lyrics say: "I may not be gay/But I don't care if you are/Live your life in peace/(...) if they laugh." In general, Brutal Truth represent everything that can be so good about metal-- rage against the injustices and stupidity in the world. I wish I liked their music a little more, but they definitely have my respect.

Brutal Truth... what to say...
The cd has fast agressive drums, deep tuned catchy guitars, vocals that change from deep growling to shreiking. The other reviewers comming about the band being "politically correct", I'd have to disagree since the majority of politicians are against people who are gay. Also, if they were politically correct, why would they make a song about how we're messing up the world and that people are too greedy to try and fix it? Exactly. Lyricly, Brutal Truth are direct about their opinions. They don't hide what they mean by metaphors or poetry. In total, I would have to say this cd is some of Brutal Truth's best. The best songs on this cd would have to be "Birth Of Ignorance" and "Denial of Existance".

I will start off, by saying grindcore isn't a favorite genre of mine. Sure does it have a handful of good bands? Yes the majority however is repetitive and somewhat boring. This was my first Brutal Truth cd and still one of my favorites of theirs.I think its refreshing to see a band like this have songs like "anti homophobe" because when that song starts do you really think they will be discussing showing homosexual men and women the same respect you show others? Hell no, the drums in that song are insane and the riffs just kick your ass. An them being anti homophobic doesn't make them gay just means they have morals. My favorite song on this cd would probably by "birth of ignorance" it starts out sorda slow and gets a little faster every second before it fully kicks in at about 50 seconds into it. I do however enjoy grindcore more then death metal (lets face it vocal wise they have alot in common) because alot of grindcore bands don't rely on the stupid shock value of bands like Deicide and Cannibal Corpse along with many many others in death metal. So even if you aren't a fan of the genre, trust me you WILL enjoy this band and this album.

Back when grindcore started it was associated with left-wing politics, especially anarchism and (libertarian) socialism. The comments by the d*ckhead below about the song 'Anti-Homophobe' show just how far the grindcore scene has 'progressed'. Now we have totally rubbish bands like Pig Destroyer producing meaningless rubbish, and people think that is grindcore. Real grindcore - at least the grindcore I'd be proud to associate myself with - is Napalm Death, Nausea, Terrorizer, Nasum, and Brutal Truth. As Barney says, the message is in the title of DK's 'Nazi Punks F**k Off', and as Kevin Sharpe said, 'f**k 'em if they laugh'.

DD \m/