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Defeated Sanity: Psalms of the moribund
23/12/11 || The Duff
Two albums are the heaviest I’ve ever heard barring grindcore: Disgorge’s “Consume the Forsaken” and Defeated Sanity’s “Psalms of the Moribund”. Both are also the best brutal death metal records I’ve heard, although my affection between this and “Chapters of Repugnance” is forever alternating in so far as favourites go. “Psalms…” is such a cacophonic mix of tech, jazz, breakdowns (before the band inundated its sound with slamz galore, i.e. when Wolfgang Teske was still on board and knew the importance of goddamn Suffocation’s influence to the scene, may he rest in peace) and astounding drumming courtesy of Lille Gruber, this record is quite simply one of the most astounding I’ve come across.
Lille Gruber is the guy who brings this band all together much in the same vein as Myers for Disgorge; without the drummer accentuating every note of such thick-as-mud productions, BDM can appear just noise to me for the first couple of months trying to pick out a riff, so the rhythm section is often what will have me sticking it through the migraines. Well, Lille is less direct of a drummer than Disgorge’s pretty much non-stop skin-molester, giving the songs more room to breathe and otherwise adopting more of a playful, jazz-centered style of playing; then when demanded of him, he beats the shit out of his drums to create a frenzied wall of noise I doubt even the most barbaric death metal drummers can compete with – it’s a captivating blend of lithe and all-out battering.
The breakdowns on this bitch are monstrous; what makes “Chapters…” such an appealing album to me is that it is svelte brutal death metal, but really the breakdowns are a touch on the generic, variations of the same slam with the exception of “Lurid Assimilation” (and lo, a track written by Teske). On “Psalms of the Moribund”, there’s only a small handful of slamz, the rest is all sweet Suffo-beauty with extra jazziness, a hint of the unbalancing. Unbeknownst to me until recently was that Teske was the only guitar player in the band on the debut, learning to play brutal death metal after going to a Cannibal Corpse gig with his son, drummer Lille.
Well, “Psalms…” is more of a well-rounded affair with contributions from newfound guitarist Christian Kühn, more authentically heavy, less groove, catchy-oriented but rather straight-up pummeling and vicious. Also, the old review of this record accused all of the tracks of sounding the same, which honestly couldn’t be further from the truth; although we don’t have the impeccable flow of “Chapters…”, there is a diversity here rarely found in brutal death metal, every track bringing the utmost to the table with the exception of the end tracks kept short for the sake of the album’s not seeming overwhelming and re-recorded track “Prelude to the Tragedy” appearing out of place a tad.
The production is nigh-on-perfect, a lot less gleaming than the follow-up “Chapters of Repugnance”; bass-heavy to an absolute maximum without draining a single note from the guitars, it’s only when Lille goes into his total ‘white-noise’ phases by hitting absolutely everything at his disposal that you’ll have to devote some time with headphones in true Disgorge-syndrome style. As far as brutal death metal goes, I don’t think you can do better – the drumming is chaotic, empowering, heavy-as-fuck and dexterously executed, the guitars are a mix of straightforward, blunt, catchy and tech (think Disgorge but less gut-wrenchingly unrelenting as well as less standard rhythm-wise), and of course the vocals deliver – people rave about AJ Magana, apparently there are the equivalent to Pavarotti in DM realms, but so long as it’s bowel-shattering we can all agree the job is done, yes? This album is possibly the finest of its kind and certainly not to be overlooked.
- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Grindethic Records
- Website: Defeated Sanity MySpace
- Band
- Jens Staschel: vocals
- Wolfgang Teske: guitars
- Christian Kühn: guitars
- Jacob Schmidt: bass
- Lille Gruber: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Stoned Then Defiled
- 02. Fatal Self Inflicted Disfigurement
- 03. Prelude to the Tragedy
- 04. Hideously Disembodied
- 05. Butchered Identity
- 06. Psalms of the Moribund
- 07. Engorged with Humiliation
- 08. Arousal Through Punishment
- 09. Artifacts of Desolation
