Need to Control

Need to Control

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Need to Control is the surprisingly rare death-metal CD that maneuvers around the genre's mounting pile of clichés. Its songs are bound in Kevin Sharp's guttural vocals and the blur of Rich Hoak's circular drumming, energized by Dan Lilker's rumbling bass, and given character by Gurn's odd guitar lines, but from there everything flies into new territory. The band has faith that anything it touches will turn to metal. Representative of the unconventional approach employed by the band, "Godplayer" includes didgeridoo. All the right sounds are applied to all the right causes, pressurizing metal until it seeps experimental noise at the seams. --Ian Christe

Tracks:

Collapse
Black Door Mine
Turn Face
Godplayer
I See Red
Ironlung
Bite The Hand
Ordinary Madness
Media Blitz
Judgement
Brain Trust
Choice Of A New Generation
Mainliner
Displacement
Crawlspace

Amazon.com

Need to Control is the surprisingly rare death-metal CD that maneuvers around the genre's mounting pile of clichés. Its songs are bound in Kevin Sharp's guttural vocals and the blur of Rich Hoak's circular drumming, energized by Dan Lilker's rumbling bass, and given character by Gurn's odd guitar lines, but from there everything flies into new territory. The band has faith that anything it touches will turn to metal. Representative of the unconventional approach employed by the band, "Godplayer" includes didgeridoo. All the right sounds are applied to all the right causes, pressurizing metal until it seeps experimental noise at the seams. --Ian Christe

Customer Reviews:

GRINDCORE LEGENDS AT THEIR BEST .......2005-09-25

From the first 30 seconds of "Collapse", you know you are in for something special. Dissonant, sludgy, and downtuned riffing kick off one of the more unique opening tracks on any true Grindcore album. No blast beats, no 1000mph playing, just a powerful, noisy, and abrasive monster of an opener. From there it just gets better. Tracks like Godplayer, Choice of a New Generation, Back Door Mine, and I See Red, completely destroyed any previous notions of what grind could sound like. Brutal Truth, with this release, re-wrote the rules of the game and made an album that was not only brutal, but completely fresh and original.

If you are already a grind fan, buy this. If you are just getting into extreme metal, you need this even more!

Grindcore Worth Buying.......2005-03-06

Brutal Truth is one of the only grindcore bands I like, along with Napalm Death, Pig Destroyer and Nasum (R.I.P. Mieszko). I downloaded "Choice Of A New Generation" off the Earache site (you'd have to buy it off iTunes now), and the song got me hooked to this band. As you may know, Brutal Truth isn't a band that talks about death and agony, they're like the Suicidal Tendencies and are based on politics. This is not your average nonsense grindcore. This is stuff that you are guaranteed to love.

The only grindcore worth listening to.......2004-12-25

Most grindcore bands are quite annoying. Though the music is fast and well created, the vocals destroy the entire thing. Most grindcore is fast music with loud, abnoxious, monotone shrieking, and isn't worth listening to.
Brutal Truth is not like those bands. I like this album in particular because of the low, deep vocals. Something that most grindcore is absent of. I think future grindcore bands need to take a look at Brutal Truth to get a lesson in grindcore music.
If it isn't Brutal Truth (or Pig Destroyer, or Naplam Death) then it is crappy grindcore.

Brilliant........2004-10-21

Brutal truth brings you that intelligent grind sound that doesn't let you down, one bit. I've been always supporting the guys from bt and in return...I been blessed with a great sound and no other band, in the genre can match the perfection of brutal truth's music. If you love pure grind? Then "need to control" should already be in your grind collection but if not? You dont know what grindcore means. All hail to brutal-truth!

(you) Need To (not) Control (the urge to buy this recording).......2004-08-28

Simply the best Brutal Truth record, hands down. While "Extreme Conditions..." was quite the eye opener with its sheer speed and precision, the band came into their own with this longplayer.
Earache at this point had an amazing stable built, along with the money to produce sounds that were unlike any other labels' endeavors. The days of "From Enslavement to Obliteration" by Napalm Death and "Reek of Putrefaction" by Carcass were long gone, and fans of the label could actually hear the blurred riffing, guttural evocations and blast beats of the "extreme" muscians they were putting out with an increasing degree of clarity. In fact, I would have to say one would be hard-pressed to find a better sounding mid-period grindcore record anywhere, and it even rivalled the nearly incomparable "Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious" by Carcass, which I consider the crown jewel of the Earache canon.
What sets this one apart is the inclusion of experimentalism by the band, with some songs being lightning fast from start to finish, some being slow grinders with fast parts or endings, some total dirges that never sped up, and some industrial and hardcore punk tinges peppered throughout. The guest spot by Mike Williams from Eyehategod on the nice Germs' cover also didn't hurt.
No longer completely under the shadow of Napalm's legacy, Brutal Truth took intensity to the next level while playing at any speed. The vocals were out there, as one might expect, but I must cite the drumming of Rich Hoak as the prime motivating factor here. Maybe microphones were shocked and confused with the advent of the blast, but I suppose one was found for this particular recording session that didn't waver a bit. Hoak's snare strokes are masterful and clearly represented here, propelling the already potent blend of string-fury and screaming-belching into a hyper-speed thrash festival, with pummeling counterpoints replete with deadly double bass and palm muting. They also threw in a couple of straight-up noise collages, which while being entirely overlong, were interesting in content and atmosphere. This is actually the only problem I have with the record, and that's rather minor, in my opinion.
It is rather unfortunate that they would not work with Earache any longer, as the next few recordings would be put out on a fledgling Relapse. Relapse was still somewhat in their infancy with the signing or Brutal Truth, and the production on the follow-up to this one, "Kill Trend Suicide," is positively laughable.
Buy this first, then "Extreme Conditions..." which is also phenomenal, then "Sounds of the Animal Kingdom" on Relapse, which is something of a return to form. They would never top this outing, though. Oh, check out the band Venomous Concept, which features the vocalist Kevin Sharp and some other metal luminaries if you are so inclined after hearing this monstrous album.