Grindcore tends to be as musically minimalist — faster!
faster! — as it is politically black and white. But within the
genre’s narrow confines, Brutal Truth has always been a band of weirdos
and innovators, importing instruments (from saxophone to didgeridoo)
and offering near-ambient interludes between blast-beat-driven
explosions. On this album, the instrumental “Semi-Automatic Carnation”
and the damn near epic (by grindcore standards) “Afterworld” and “Grind
Fidelity” allow BT to stretch out and slow down. They know that’s not
what people want to hear, though, so it’s quickly back to
machine-gun-assault mode. Eleven of Evolution Through Revolution‘s 20 tracks are less than two minutes long; six come
in under the 90-second mark. After all, if you need more than 49
seconds to express the core concept of a song called “War Is Good”
(some irony there, probably), you’re doing it wrong. Possibly the
biggest surprise here is a cover of the Minutemen’s “Bob Dylan Wrote
Propaganda Songs,” which is all the more unsettling when you notice how
much vocalist Kevin Sharp looks like former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt
these days. — Phil Freeman
This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2009.
