Violence returns with Defeated Sanity.
In 2024, Lille Gruber (drums, Ingurgitating Oblivion, ex-Cenotaph), Jacob Schmidt (bass, ex-Cerebric Turmoil, ex-Chaosphere), Josh Welshman (vocals, ex-Autonomy) and Vaughn Stoffey (guitar, ex-Reviled) announce the release of Chronicles of Lunacy, their seventh album.
From the very first track Amputationsdrang, the band don’t pull any punches: blast, Old School mix and greasy screams combine to perfection, while adding a few spikes of technicality, crushing us with childlike ease. You’d think the carnage was over, but The Odour Of Sanctity immediately follows with the same elements, delivering violence interrupted only by brief pauses to give rhythm to the onslaught. Riffs move from a catchy groove to more or less complex explosions of rage, before Accelerating The Rot takes a more jerky, frantic approach to maintain the ambient aggression. There’s an upsurge in convoluted, dissonant elements, but they still naturally fit in with the waves of fury before the final sample, which gives way to Temporal Disintegration, where the band continues to strike at full power. The track is longer than the others, and allows for apocalyptic moshparts like this double-kick roll between two phases of heaviness, but the final bass/drum part allows us to stall before the arrival of Extrinsically Enraged, which in turn tramples us without the slightest form of compassion, lining up the wildest riffs. The violence/technique duality returns with A Patriarchy Perverse, which gives me the pleasure of announcing its most suffocating passage with sampled vocals, then sends us flying from one extreme to the other with devastating palm-mutes. Barely a few seconds of respite with an ominous sound, then the band returns on Condemned To Vascular Famine, first with this little Jazz sequence, then with all its power at a sustained pace and punctuated by very precise and worked moments. The track gives us one last moment of floating, barely disturbed by a guitar, then Heredity Violated announces itself without mercy, combining all the musicians’ know-how to offer us a final tornado of frenetic violence.
If you had any doubts, Defeated Sanity will tell you straight out: they are one of the most violent bands in Brutal Death. Chronicles of Lunacy will bury you alive under its pachydermic blows.
95/100
