BRUTAL TRUTH

For Drug Crazed Grind Freaks

Relapse

6.5 / 10

Track listing:

01. k.a.p.
02. Dead Smart
03. Blind Leading the Blind
04. Let's go to War
05. Choice of a new Generation
06. Walking Corpse
07. Fisting
08. Homesick
09. Stench of Profit
10. Jemenez Cricket
11. (untitled)

It makes sense that Relapse would pull the pin on this grenade and toss it into the crowd as a kind of reintroduction to "drug crazed grind freaks" the world over now that BRUTAL TRUTH has reunited to school all the young bucks. It is by no means a perfect live album, but its 21 minutes is wholly representative of grindcore's militantly fearsome foursome.

The short of it is that "For Drug Crazed Grind Freaks Only!" consists of 10 tracks recorded live for radio promotion purposes at Noctum Studios in New Zealand in August of 1998 during the "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" world tour. Also included is an untitled track recorded in 1994 by BRUTAL TRUTH at a studio "near Lake Winnipesauke, New Hampshire." This proper (and I use the term loosely) studio recording is a freakish, non-grind track of pharmaceutical-fueled nightmare noise. The feeling one gets from it is something akin to being covered in a thousand tiny crawling bugs.

The live set of familiar favorites like "k.a.p.", "Blind Leading the Blind" and "Jemenez Cricket" reminds us all of what made BRUTAL TRUTH's grindcore so goddamn abrasive and unsettling in its primal urgency and outlaw lyricism. Oh hell, let's just call it "fuckin' nuts", the musical translation of which — a least in a way that is viscerally meaningful — is harder than it may seem to the virgin ear. No one flips his wig like vocalist and rabble-rouser Kevin Sharp, while the drumming of Rich Hoak is spastic as hell, yet so vibrant, even as he's seemingly destroying his kit.

The problem with "For Drug Crazed Grind Freaks Only!" is that the bass and guitar are so quiet as to render the band's trademark bite little more than an intimidating bark. Honestly, it is probably not as bad as what the preceding statement makes it sound. The riff and bass sound is just too thin. That's really the only issue though, save for maybe the short running time, and it should not deter fans of BRUTAL TRUTH from grabbing a copy.

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