### Defeated Sanity: Prelude to the tragedy

#### 03/03/10 || The Duff

Very few people can claim they are genuine fans of insanely brutal death metal, and I certainly am not one of them. I doubt I will ever fully comprehend the sub-genre, as much of my lust for the technical variety. Such a facet seems intact as the musicians are often practiced to the highest standard, but sledge-hammer brutality with notes very rarely venturing beyond the top three strings of a downtuned guitar accompanied by an often muggy production to enhance the music’s impact often makes this close to unlistenable; even when you give such a chance, the time it takes to fully comprehend everything the band is playing is a struggling affair.

Browsing the SMN forums’ death metal section (where forumer Saldiac prances around as a massive cock made out of snow, yet somehow less valued as a contributor) so as to catch up on all the latest gossip concerning extreme underground bands, and the praise for this German quintet became too astounding to ignore – asked for the one album members of said community would bring on a desert island, and this band’s latest “Psalms of the Moribund” would crop up; when naming top five albums, I would find it comfortably placed numerous times alongside Gorguts, Death, Cryptopsy and Suffocation – the fucking bee’s bollocks of death metal, so I naturally had to see what the commotion was about.

As mentioned, not being the most avid fan of the sub-genre, my opinion may be misplaced, but where I find Defeated Sanity to precede American bands like Disgorge and Decrepit Birth is that they have a good ear for contrast, an astute awareness of where riffs should be taken. The musicianship comprises hyper-speed technicality much like Suffocation but with a Deeds of Flesh bluntness to it, breakdowns that are a mixed bag of the classic New York style and dreaded slamz (as a novelty factor, I can enjoy it, but it can get repetitive), and overall a variety that I find brutal death generally shies away from – in comparison to their sophomore, though, they aren’t so much breaking the mould as taking from their influences on “Prelude to the Tragedy”.

Where this disc surely does shine in the eyes of those taking shaky steps of trepidation towards their initial anal-ravaging that is oft a brutal death album is the clear production which allows every note to ring distinctively; when your anal cherry (or fruit bowl, who are we kidding you loose slag) is ready for the typical sludge-mix accompanying such a style, then by all means investigate further into the band’s discography, but as an introductory onslaught things don’t get so convenient as on this album, allowing you to feel as though you’re rebelling against the system in the most unsociable manner whilst being able to appreciate the completely off the charts technical musicianship by, y’know, being able to hear shit beyond pounding drums.

The one bandmember who strikes out, though, is in fact founding member Lille Gruber, strengthening my belief that drummers like George Kolias are shamefully predictable and very boring as a result; a very creative player who will unfortunately go unnoticed in the more popular death metal clique, but that’s the price you pay living for such a non-accommodating style of music, I guess. The rest is the grade-A style musicianship demanded of a band wishing to thrive in such a scene unforgiving to the lax and lackluster – no place for those without the heart to practice and rehearse to the point of utmost precision and expertise – and of course quality chops that, although not entirely novel, are of a very high quality and outshine many of the band’s inspirators and contemporaries alike.

- Information
- Released: 2004
- Label: Grindethic Records
- Website: Defeated Sanity MySpace
- Band
- Marcus Keller: vocals
- Wolfgang Teske: guitars
- Tino Kohler: bass
- Lille Gruber: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Liquefying Cerebral Hemispheres
- 02. Drifting Further
- 03. The Parasite
- 04. Horrid Decomposition
- 05. Tortured Existence
- 06. Apocalypse of Filth/Collapsing Human Failures
- 07. Remnants of the Deed
- 08. Prelude to the Tragedy