Now available as a limited-edition pro-manufactured cassette from the grind-junkies over at Haunted Hotel...

These pioneering grindlords are one of extreme metal's most unapologetically experimental bands, and since getting back together after a long hiatus in 2009, they've been producing harsh, noise-laced blast violence that's every bit as confrontational and edgy as their classic 90's output. That by itself is why I've been such a fan of Brutal Truth over the years, but I've also always appreciated their fatalist worldview that doesn't bother itself too much with proposing a bunch of anarchist platitudes, instead laying out the message loud and clear: we're fucked, and we're at this very moment in the throes of that the BY guys have long referred to as our "slow motion apocalypse". Not the cheeriest thought for anyone who turns to grindcore for a lil' bit of cathartic fun, but that's hardly why I listen to this stuff. Brutal Truth's latest shows that there still isn't a dull edge to be found on these grind vets, as End Time backs up it's eschatological visions with a crushing onslaught of experimental noise, brutal grindpunk, industrial heaviness and punishing sludge.

The opening song "Malice" gets this rolling with a killer atonal dirge, the band slowly lurching over a spasm of noisy chords and twitchy no-wave splattered heaviness, alternating between an angular sludgy anti-groove and faster, more frantic thrashing, then blasts into the spastic grind of "Simple Math", which ends up slipping into an off-kilter bit of southern rock riffing over the blasting grind at the end. Rich Hoak's octopoidal drumming flies all over the place on End Time, and propels this stuff into whirlwinds of chaos; after listening to the disc a couple of times, a lot of the rhythms and riffs on End Time feel more jagged than usual, almost "mathy", making some of this stuff sound incredibly angular thanks to the extremely dissonant riff-style of new guitarist Eric Burke, whose playing gives the new BT stuff a woozy, off-balance quality. And Kevin's awesome frenzied howl is as bestial as always- NOBODY sounds like this guy, his vocals are some of the best in grind, ever. The title track is another short chunk of dissonant grind etched in strange mathematics, but as usual, the band pulls out an awesome hooky riff amid the spastic blast chaos, even slipping into an unexpected melodic rock part at the very end. The album is primarily made up of these kinds of shorter, compact assaults of complex grindcore delivered in minute-and-a-half long bursts, the angular thrash riffs colliding with the skronky, atonal guitar parts, the drumming frenzied and loose, as always informed by the extremes of free-jazz percussion that has long influenced Hoak's playing in BT. There's blazing D-beat and hardcore punk that erupts on songs like "Small Talk" and "Lottery"; whenever these guys break out the hardcore stuff it fucking rips, but they always twist it and deform it into their unique cyclonic chaos. Other tracks like ".58 Caliber" blend harsh guitar noise, wild drumming and samples into an improv-thrash workout. There's a couple of collaborations on the album, frist with Italian noise artist Robert Piotrowicz on the grueling, sludgy "Warm Embrace Of Poverty", where nauseating feedback is incoporated into the crushing sludgepunk, and the song "Gut-Check" has the Chicago industrial sludge band Winters In Osaka contributing some additional toxic electronics. The end of the Lp closes with the grinding doom-laden death metal dirge "Drink Up", super slow and heavy, and on the Cd version finishes with a fifteen-minute bonus track called "Control Room", a furious free-improv noise workout with furious double-bass drumming and jazzy blasting beneath huge swathes of amplifier rumble and power electronics-style feedback abuse, layers of murky samples, harsh guitar skree, all kinds of strange electronic pulses and glitches, the sound very dense and layered, an industrialized improv blastscape that becomes very hypnotic the further you get into it's dense rumbling chaos.