Dan Lilker is calling it quits. The Brutal Truth bassist, and founding member of Anthrax, released a statement on his band’s Facebook account this morning. The heavy metal veteran is turning 50 in October, and that’s when he’s decided to call it a career.
I regret to inform Brutal Truth fans that as of October 18th, 2014, I will be retiring from being a full time recording and touring musician. That date is my 50th birthday, so I chose it symbolically as a significant milestone to make such a weighty decision. As a lot of you know, I’ve been an active member of the metal scene since the early 80s with the thrash metal bands I’ve been in before the formation of Brutal Truth in 1990, and I’m simply just tired of the rigors of touring mostly. Unlike some of my peers from the 80’s who went on to sell millions of records I have always been drawn to extreme underground metal. I don’t care about staying in 5 star hotels and having a big cushy tour bus but I am getting tired of squeezing into a van for 8 hours after all these years on the road. I have always played what I believe in and that is been priority #1, but the time has come to have a little bit more stability in my life.
And, as goes Lilker, so too goes Brutal Death. Lilker goes on to say that the band will continue to work together in 2014, but once he turns the Big-Five-Oh, Brutal Death will be no more.
Brutal Truth will still be active on the touring front until mid-October and will aim to do as much as we can in the next 9 months or so. After that, I will still have creative output with my 2 local bands in Rochester NY, Nokturnal Hellstorm and Blurring and do the occasional project tour, but yes, as of mid-October, Brutal Truth will no longer exist. I do realize that will be an extreme disappointment to all the grind freaks out there that have supported this band so rabidly all these years, and your enthusiasm will always have a special place in my heart, but I’ve made my decision, and I hope everyone can respect that.
Lilker has been active in the music scene since the 1984 release of Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal. His discography has him associated with six different bands, including most recently, Stormtroopers of Death and Brutal Truth. However, his longest tenure with any of the six would have been with Nuclear Assault, with 13 different releases that dates back to 1986.
Lilker and his bandmates under Brutal Truth made it onto the Guiness Book of World Records in 2001 for “Shortest Music Video”. The band’s video for “Collateral Damage” clocked in at 2.18 seconds long, consisting of 48 still images in manic succession, followed by a clip of an explosion.