Defeated Sanity - Psalms of the Moribund Review artwork

Rating: 8.8

Country: Germany

Release Date: 2007

Track list:
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

Band Website: Defeated Sanity

Defeated Sanity - Psalms of the Moribund

Lille Gruber - Drums
Christian Kúhn - Guitar
Jens 'Cannibaloki' Staschel - Vocals
Wolfgang Teske - Guitar
Jacob Schmidt - Bass

Here you are. It's the latest profferin' from convolooted Brootal Death outfit, Defeated Sanity! Since Prelude to the Tragedy, the band have honed their technical songwritin' skills, brushed up on their more ambitious expressions, given the slams a good polish and tidied up the disparity ‘tween the two. However, all of us Technical Brootal Death fans needn't besoil ourselves in anticipation of bein' shafted comatose by twenty five minutes of dreary slug-chug disappointment, ‘cause the act have saved all the bits key to their tech-survival! So, such stuff as skew-whiff riffs, squashed up time signatures, quick-fire time changes, barbed-string squall, elaborate drum arrangements and extremely beefy vokill uproar is still here, but this time around it all features among songs of enhanced coherence ‘n' conviction!

To this dusty, dog-eared reviewer, the initial appeal of Defeated Sanity was the startling rate at which they perform their instruments, the frequency with which they changed riffular direction and the positively claustrophobic, utterly unpredictable drumwork. This is all jolly good for the first third or so of a release, but can soon become a chore to absorb! The band meander, the mind wanders, and the very spinnin' of the album can even become irrelevant altogether, resulting in the sad loss of dozens of dexterous rhythms and lots of painstakingly penned riffs. No such depression here, ‘cos the group have ripened since the debut, which whilst bold ‘n' technical was also a bit tangled ‘n' mechanical, and have given us a sapid Brootal fruit that we can all enjoy! While there are still plenty of sudden rhythmic twists ‘n' and a lot of choppy chops ‘n' changes in their gob-loppin' chug-chops, the musicians now appear to be performin' a bit deeper within the confines of their compositions, so whenever these diversions take place, the band manage to follow them up by bringin' their tunes to satisfyingly memorable conclusions. I could've done without the stolid stock-chug that pops up here ‘n' there, to wit, unimaginative two-note anti-riffs tattooed with totally incongruous drum-tempos, but the band keep these to a minimum, often eradicating them with the next, more imaginative and better crafted Brootal motif. To progress towards the subsequent chunk o' blastulence, the band often wrench out menacin' one-guitar segues that ascend all muddy ‘n' bedragged from a mire o' sustained feedback, boggy vox and cymbal-shimmer, but rather than doin' the usual and all joining in for the predictable heads-down ham-fisted slam, the band do the opposite, introducin' us to an accessible chug-nugget afore floutin' listener expectation altogether by bludgeonin' us with an entirely different structural cudgel. Sometimes they do give their slam-jams enough time to breathe, fillin' ‘em with crafty drummin' and hypnotic patterns of gryllidaecious vokills. This is like Prelude… with limitations on their ‘all over the shop' style, loppin' off the most elaborate of the structural bedeckments and replacin' em with the more accessible bits of their split with Poppy Seed Grinder.

‘Cos of the enormous influence that classic works of technical, percussive Death Metal acts like Suffo, Cryptopsy and Gorguts have ‘pon the band, Psalms… does not sound at all dissimilar from identically inspired Brootal/Tech Death bands of recent times; havin' a sound somewhere ‘tween the slam, bash ‘n' clatter of Disgorge (US) or Decrepit Birth, and the emasculating multiple riff pile-up of the Pyaemia /Disavowed/Arsebreed incestgang, along with the structural squiggle of Puked Genital Purulency by Cenotaph and inescapably, those highly claustrophobic, Deeds o' Flesh-esque (de)composition (de)construction principles.

So does it sound any good then? Well, the production gives the disc a lively Brootal Death workshop feel, with overdriven chrome-plated chop-saw guitars, hammer-drillpress drumwork at full throttle and vokill sounds piped in from the low quality plumbing of the lavatories next door. The prod also features a lot of the synchronised pannin' wizardry that seems popular with many a Brootal Death mix-engineer nowadays, lobbin' guitar tracks from left to right with pan-twiddlin' abandon! This serves to enhance the ominous, unpredictable edge, tossin' jagged ‘n' irregular riff patterns around without warning from one end o' your noggin to the other in violently erratic sequences. In addition, there are some almost effectively implemented bass drops, but I think some of them pop out concurrently with aforesaid stereo-image manipulation, so it sounds like a low-end eruption wipin' out half o' the guitar. That aside, this is an in-depth, porridge thick representation with a few mixin' desk conjurin' tricks that lend themselves well to the the whole point o' Psalms.

Apart from the odd clanger here ‘n' there, this ought to please fans o' Defeated Sanity, as well as all those who simply cannot function without their daily allowance of a musical supplement that causes migranous cerebral entanglement due to the cranial enburrowment of whirlin' drill-bit riffery.

October 16th, 2007