Defeated Sanity - The Sanguinary Impetus (2020)^{Release ID: 20400}

Until the apocalypse, there will be bands knocking off Cryptopsy and Suffocation, an unspoken genre you could call "brutal tech death."  Many of these albums have a tendency to sound like the knockoffs, save a few key bands like the Egyptian-oriented Nile, or the short and sweet band that's always changing their sound a little: Defeated Sanity.  A couple years ago I blew through all the Defeated Sanity albums just to get through another brutal death band.  The last of these was The Sanguinary Impetus, and by that point I must've been a little burnt out on brutal death because I only gave it an 8.5.

Now the band has had 27 years of experience when this was recorded, and it shows.  Our drummer, Lille Gruber, has been going about this career since the age of 11, and the practice has payed off.  He's able to create the mania of the album and keep it up throughout.  And all the while, the band is maintaining the strongest sense of insanity they've ever had, even more so than the much more avant-garde Psalms of the Moribund.  This keeps the album unpredictable and shocking until the end, even if you've technically heard the tricks before.  The glory of it is the randomness of it all feeling so utterly consistent that it largely overcomes its monotony by being to wild and wacky.  Despite the wackiness, there's a deep seriousness involved in the songwriting that lets you know that the band is trying harder than they've ever done.  In fact, because the distinct sound of the album doesn't overstay its welcome, the last two tracks are likely the best due to maintaining its unpredictable approach with stronger effect.

The Sanguinary Impetus is a modern death classic that does pure justice to a genre that's been beaten like a decomposed horse already pushing daisies.  There's hope for the genre as long as bands like Defeated Sanity focus as much on depth as brutality, and this is one of the heaviest death albums of the 2020's.

German brutal/technical death metallers Defeated Sanity have been a very consistent performer over the years with every new album commanding a level of respect from a small niche market within the underground extreme metal scene that I once dedicated my life to. They’re a more challenging prospect than many of their peers at times due to their flat-out refusal to compromise on technicality in the interest of brutality & I can’t deny that there have been times when I’ve struggled to make sense of all the chaos over the years but I inherently WANT to like this band as they tick so many of my musical boxes with 2020’s “The Sanguinary Impetus” album (their sixth full-length) being a prime example of what I’m talking about.

Upon first listen it’s very easy for Defeated Sanity’s savage wall of noise to wash over you without much sticking as “The Sanguinary Impetus” is astoundingly technical & complex yet possesses a production job that’s been left intentionally dark & murky. It’s only upon repeat listens that the nuances start to become clear. You see, this record is surprisingly ambitious in its structure & scope. The band have seriously thrown the kitchen sink at both the brutal & technical elements of their sound here. It doesn’t always work but there can be no denying that it’s a consistently intriguing & challenging experience with the rewards eventually coming for those that are willing to persist.

Despite being one of the most relentlessly brutal bands in death metal, Defeated Sanity present a jazzy influence at times & I suspect that bands like Atheist & Watchtower have received many plays in the band’s rehearsal room. You can hear the clear technical proficiency in the instrumentation but the production job does it’s best to mask it with the overall soundscape regularly being tempted to descend into a mess but usually pulling back just in time through a more traditionally structured section. Drummer/band leader Lille Gruber doesn’t sit still for a second & while he may not be the tightest skinsman in the scene he’s certainly one of the most interesting. The rhythmic complexities on display even move into polyrhythmic territory at times which won’t be for the ears of the faint-hearted when presented within the scope of a brutal death metal backbone. Front man Josh Welshman’s indecipherable grunts remind me very much of an early 90’s Chris Barnes (Cannibal Corpse) meets Lord Worm (Cryptospy) hybrid & he does a pretty good job to be fair but I think a touch more intelligibility could give Defeated Sanity more appeal.

"The Sanguinary Impetus" certainly contains some exhilarating material in its own right & I’ve really enjoyed the experience, even if I can never quite let go of that niggling voice in my head that wishes that Defeated Sanity would tighten up a little more. They're clearly wanting to play in the same space as my favourite band Suffocation in their approach to creating music. They manage to match them in terms of brutality & even surpass them in the technicality stakes but they lack the same level of precision in their execution for an album like this one to play at the elite level of the subgenre. In saying that though, it’s this characteristic that separates the band from their peers as they don’t sound anything like copycats & have created their own identifiable sound.