Defeated Sanity – Passages Into Deformity

A country that was not in my favored list for death metal bands is Germany. And I say “was” because I haven’t heard any death metal band before that made me feel this way. Well still it is not one of my favorite countries, yet there are two bands that blow my mind. And one of them is Obscura. These days I found the second one.

Defeated Sanity is a technical brutal death metal band, but they linger in the edge of slam. Still my opinion on slamming death metal is not the best. Lately though I discover many bands to satisfy my tastes. These guys from Germany have the right amount of Suffocation-ish and Devourment-ish riffs that mix brutally. So you have these cutting edge slow tempo guitar riffs that makes you headbang and wreck your spine. And then the speed increases fiercely to blow your brains back on the wall. Listen to “Frenzy” (what else could it be?) to see what I mean.

And to keep the balance right we have the technical parts. Technical could not be the right word. I believe the exact term that could describe these musical elements is “jazzy”. Yes they have a bit of Cryptopsy inspiration on them. I can declare that without fear. There is also an outro theme with piano on “Verses Of Deformity” that reminded me of “Phobophile”.

The whole technical approach comes from the guitar work of Christian Kühn. But the bass solos and the drumming specifically on songs such as “Naraka” and “Verblendung” reveals the capacity of all band members. “Perspectives” is also a song where the atmosphere is overwhelming. The particular song has it all. The perfect package of just 6:49 duration and your head will spin for days afterwards.

The production is well balanced and don’t let the guttural and brutal vocals of Konstantin Lühring comes on top. If there was just an error on the production this would be none. I couldn’t find a single mistake on the sound of this album. “Passages Into Deformity” is definitely on my list for the best albums of 2013. All lovers of early Cryptopsy will love this one too. In addition anyone into Suffocation, Deeds Of Flesh, Devourment and Disavowed, you ought to check the third release of Defeated Sanity.