Defeated Sanity :'Chronicles of Lunacy"

The band's 2016 album was the last one we reviewed and it got an 8.5, which is better than most. This album is more committed to burtality, which presents its own challenges. What are they going to do that Cannibal Corpse does not do better is the number one question. There is a little more grindcore feel alone with the technical aspects of the band, which finds subtle jazz trapping in the drumming and bass playing as the guitar chugs around their escapades. The second song finds a better balance of the jazz technicality with the more brutal pound. The grunt of the guttural vocals has a similar low gurgle as Cannibal Corpse, though Corpsegrinder's voice has more power and personality. Still, this guy gets the job done well enough. 

They jerk you around like a blood-soaked roller coaster on "Accelerating the Rot". The guitars do find some interesting hooks, and they dazzle you in the manner they are capable of turning the riffs around. While many tech death bands get preoccupied with solos, these guys still care about the song and bring the grooves as needed. Lille Gruber is an amazing drummer who is capable of doing it all, but the hidden VIP here is the bassist Jacob Schmidt, who not only keeps up but embellishes around the chaos. When they just plow into the chug and slow things down it's just as effective as when they are firing off all the jazz-inflected bells and whistles. They do not blast at you for prolonged periods and keep dragging you down the maze-like corridors of the songs. 

Though like most technical death metal if they are not giving me riffs that will keep my attention and things fall into a blaze of rapid-fire jazz abstraction with growling over it begins to fade into a distortion salad in the background.  "a Patriarchy Pervese' does find the meaty riffs stomping around enough. There is a great deal being thrown at you throughout the song. The vocals are so low and guttural that they are not an active participant in creating the narrative of the song and feel more like a layer of sound. This song finds them remembering that head banging is the priority over fretboard mastery. 

At six minutes "Condemned to Vascular Famine" is the longest song on the album. It opens with rubbery riffs dancing in an angular fashion before blasting at you full speed ahead. It hammers almost too hard for its own good. Based on the sample it is about vampires, which is a subject more death metal should cover. It does find a solid grooving break-down style riff to work off of. The last song goes more for brutality and accomplishes proving the band as one of the more intense death metal bands out, this is not the album's best song. I will give this one a 9. It is not the style of death metal I am into when it comes to my own tastes, but the band's talents can not be denied. This drops November 22nd on Season of Mist. 

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