I will tell you about a very interesting compilation and I will do it in an extensive way because I feel it is important. It is a CD only release but has a crucial value I think. I am talking about the Animal Rights benefit sampler, called ANIMAL TRUTH. Featuring are vegan, veggie straight-edge bands from all over the globe. Every song on this compilation is lyrically about live and let live and respect for all living beings. Also, the majority of the bands give an explanation about the lyrics, why they are vegans or vegetarians. Some interesting facts and views are given:

• Like the fact that animal rights movements in punk music weren’t a nineties thing but already existed in the early eighties. An influential band was CRASS, says the band STATEMENT . Also facts about the resistance and oppression the animal rights movement had to face are discussed . Like being beat up by the police and then getting arrested.
• The band PURIFICATION (IT) associates the ‘Great Enoch’ – this is the sledgehammer used by the workers during the English Luddite to destroy the machines that took away their work and soul – with the animal rights actions they do. According to them animal rights is a fight against the dominion of technology and mechanisation and the values of exploitation, consumption and emisseration that go along with it.
• SLAVEARC (UK) says that when all peaceful attempts of animal liberation are exhausted the truth must be followed to its logical end and the final step must be taken…
• xNATURAL ORDERx (BE) give an ecological view, being vegetarian or vegan is more than not eating meat products or animal products but it is also about taking care of nature in general, the environment. Saving mother earth is saving the animals, a total liberation.
• ONExMORE (BE) say that eating animals and so listing them as inferior is an illogical and selfish way of thinking. And that a cruelty free life is not a far-fetched, naive or surrealistic choice but a change within and that this change will benefit for the capacities and power within yourself!
• LIAR (BE) dream of the fact that one day all humans, animals and nature lives in harmony with each other. But realize that this is gonna take a long crusade and that you should start with the face that you see in the mirror everyday. And that the scene still has people who are ignorant to the horrible facts of the meat industry. They say they want to start with the hardcore scene first, this by an educative way of acting.
• CONTRITION (DE) go deeper on the fact that being vegetarian or vegan is breaking with society’s rules and therefore you must justify yourself against everyone. Therefore they wrote this song called “Burst The Chains”. To identify the listeners with this feelings and to keep them believing that there are other ways.
• DRIVEN (NL) tells us that we are blind to consumption because we have grown accustomed to the animals being used and what they are used for. And that we must stay down to earth because these industries are highly profitable and that so government will do very little about it. To close with they pinpoint the fact that the power to make a change lies with YOU and that silence equals death.

You can see the cooperating bands in the above picture. This compilation is made by Sober Mind Records in the year 1998 and Hans gives us a good introduction on the first page of the CD booklet. And it is explicitly said that all profits of this CD are donated to various animal rights organizations. And also to people who are in prison for the direct actions they did… motivated by the in-justice.

Musically this CD features unreleased songs by several bands and it is of course all in the line of the well known vegan sxe metalcore. The CD’s artwork is meant to be shocking, all animal corpses and there is a cool outro from Master Yoda at the end of the CD.

“MEAT IS MURDER”