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BRUTAL TRUTH INTERVIEW
 BRUTAL TRUTH - interview with Danny Lilker, June 2009
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Recently Brutal Truth released their first album in 12 years, Evolution Through Revolution. Fans and critics agree, the Truth is still Brutal, vicious, and relentless as ever. Here's our interview with the band's founder and now legendary bassist, Danny Lilker.
The reviews of the new album have been great. Has the buzz about this record guaranteed that we won't wait a dozen years for the next?
Ha, hopefully not! We’ve definitely got some more tricks up our sleeves so when the touring cycle is finished, we will write more music.
What prompted the reunion of Brutal Truth and when did you guys realize there was still something special going on there?
Originally it was to help out Eyehategod by participating on a tribute record for them after all their gear was wiped out in Hurricane Katrina, once we learned how to cover “Sisterfucker”, we just decided to see if we could play our own stuff, and the spark was still there, so we said “Why not”.
You were quite busy with other things since Brutal Truth's last album (SOD, NUCLEAR ASSAULT, RAVENOUS, etc.) of all those bands, which is the best for you personally? By that I mean, which band do you find brings out your best personal performance and which band do you feel closest too?
That’s a difficult question ‘cos each band satisfies a particularly specific desire in me. SOD was great ‘cos we never played out much so it was great to finally bring it to everyone all over the world like we never did back in the day. With Nuke, this was the first band I got to tour the world with so playing with Nuke always brought back memories of these days. With The Ravenous I got to play thick soupy old school death metal with a great cast of characters…and musically all these bands were different enough that I got to play all kinds of intense metal.
I may be out of line here, if I am then don't answer, but, is John Connelly crazy?
John is just eccentric, he’s quite sane and very intelligent, but he’s a little different.
Brutal Truth were sort of like the MC5 in that you guys didn't get all that much attention until after you broke up, then all of a sudden everyone began referencing Brutal Truth as an influence. Your thoughts?
Couldn’t help noticing this myself! My theory is that the world wasn’t ready for Brutal Truth back then, we were kind of “ahead of our time”, and now the world has caught up! It’s really interesting seeing how “popular” we are now.
A lot of stuff has changed in Grindcore music over the years, especially tempo, did you guys feel like you needed to kick it up a notch in any way?
I don’t think we thought about it consciously. There was certainly what I would call an “unspoken awareness” that we better write a totally intense record, but the tempo came naturally. We were always really, really, fast, so it’s natural that we would kick it up a notch I think.
It may be too early to say this but in the future we may look back on the two era's of Brutal Truth. What is the definitive album of the first era?
That would be a tie between Extreme Conditions… and Sounds…. The former put us on the map and gave the grindcore scene a good kick in the ass, but the latter was an album where we really had forged a completely original style and we are very proud of that record.
With the world situtation how it is, don't you agree that it's the perfect time to have Brutal Truth together again with a new record?
I think that after 8 years of an American administration that really destroyed this country, it was certainly a good time to speak out and provide some cathartic fucking grindcore!
Brutal Truth seems to be an equal partnership. IS that different than some of your other projects where maybe you were running the show? How is this different for you creatively?
I never really ran the show in any band I was in, I usually got the most attention due to my previous endeavors, but actually in a band like The Ravenous, I didn’t do much at all, those guys wrote the music and I played it, haha.
Is there anything about Danny Lilker people might find strange, given your reputation as a Metal God? Do you do yoga or eat a lot of granola?
Ha! No, nothing that strange except talking to my cats in a high-pitched voice which I think everyone does at home!
Danny thanks for the time.
Cheers man and thanks for the support!
- Alan Gilkeson
