Review Summary: Their Name Apparently Referring to Einstein's Aphorism
“Brutal” death metal, an oxymoron-level irony as potent as nu “metal” or “white” metal. An additional adjective as such would suggest greater intensity, a more vicious disposition, a chimaera-like beast that not only has several heads but whose posterior possesses a variety of venomous serpents in place of a mundane tallywag. Alas, once peering into the alleyway containing that gargantuan shadow one instead finds a creature not only a mere portion of its implied size but missing half its teeth. Now any hungry mongrel is still dangerous to some extent, but should you find yourself under attack you’ll hardly need Herculean strength to survive.
Nevertheless brutal death metal has long since possessed its own several thousand acres in the Kingdom of Metallia, and while its inhabitants tend to stay safely behind their great umbral apparitions, now and again one a bit more prominent emerges for feasting.
Defeated Sanity are some hungry boys.
Chronicles of Lunacy is now their seventh full-length (for BDM anyway, naturally as is tradition these haphazard efforts cannot be sustained for much longer than a half hour) LP, no mean feat for any metal band, let alone brutal death. However despite their niche of a more technical than usual distribution of riffs and fills, they stray little from the common pasturage well-known to every brutal death creator and listener. Wanky bass, chunky coated-in-filth-pinch-harmonic spammed riffs inevitably brought to a standstill by momentum-destroying breakdowns, that awkward and hollow but somewhat appealing buttock-slapping tone the drums are always set to, and the definition of Cookie Monster vocals. It can become a considerable task to take a death metal album seriously when at the forefront of every brutal solipsism is GIMME A COOOOOKIIIIIIEEE!! It doesn’t help either that the overclear production preferred by today’s death metal bands takes away genre-accenting griminess.
Do they play well? Of course! Them and every other death metal band capable of pushing out over half a dozen albums as a demi- or full-on career, but the best bands do more than have the same grindy guitar and blastbeat spam, granted Defeated Sanity have overcome that slightly with the progressive sections and intersplices, but they are few and far between, only last a few seconds at a time, and ultimately level out with any other brutal death album not bothering to do anything technical. Death metal is distinguished by an individual band’s composition, and while they play brutal death metal about as competently as can be, their composition style is only marginally distinct.
A great example of how to ruin a death metal song is seen in
Accelerating the Rot. It starts fairly well: great rolling pinch-ending riff into chunky undulations and a straight charge-and-assault, only to flatline into a needless we-have-no-idea-where-the-enemy-is-so-leave-no-stone-unturned drone strike barrage 23 seconds in. You did nothing but kill my anticipation at great resource cost — no, I am not impressed with the fact every potentially useful building is now levelled. It continues with several indulgent similar-vein patterns just to lead into a connecting filler riff for rest and some chunky pauses to rest more before relaxing fully during a balls-dangling slam. Yes, there is a cute little diddly in between sections but no that does not excuse the laziness, and your short-lived ferocity means nothing when half the song is turtle-speed slow. The rest of the track meanders bipolarly juggling between admittedly pungent highlights and typical brutal wank heard everywhere else. At least it ends strong with a precise we-know-exactly-where-a-great-mass-of-the-enemy-lies artillery unleashing.
The rest of the album has its various and variously integrated turn-ons and turn-offs throughout. The engine-failing-to-start intro to
Temporal Disintegration is kind of neat, but seriously who is calling the giant wave of nothing afterwards the epitome of br00tality? Stage-resting song.
The Odour of Sanctity isn’t anything out of the ordinary and its slams outright demolish what was going on to the point of boredom, but it does have some mild ass-shaking grooves. Album opener
Amputationsdrang is a nice traditional brutal spilge, goes ahrd until the breakdown anyway.
Extrinsically Enraged is a mighty chuggasaurus with some cool technical chops but never elevates much beyond that, and
Patriarchy Perverse is another slow fatass of a dying dinosaur, also a stage-resting song.
Don’t peg me as a total hater though, for within their train-wrecked psychology Defeated Sanity still had the wisdom to save the best for last.
Condemned to Vascular Famine intially trips the listener up with a fillery stage-resting intro, but turns out to be the most sane composition of the whole album, balanced between technicality, rest, and an appropriate amount of force. Still it is not without the usual brutal slackings — the giant middle slam in particular goes on too long — yet it remains the best song on the record, diverse without pushing it, not slagging too much though still more than amicable.
And finally right at the end of this poutine-mess of a record is received the most br00tal track of all, the Cryptopsy-like
Heredity Violated — badass chunky groove intro even if typical with its nice emphatic drum fill preceding an all-out assault bombastic barrage superior to all previous bursts, tech-leanings throughout, at least, of course, until THAT DAMNED SLAM JUST STOPS IT! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHH!!!!!
