Defeated Sanity - Psalms of the Moribund

Rating: 7.5

Country: UK

Genre: Brutal Death Metal

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

Defeated Sanity is a band that receives a lot of hype in a fairly narrow circle of death metal fans. Enthusiasts of the ultra-guttural 'brutal' style of DM pioneered by Suffocation can't seem to stop talking about this band, though they're largely unknown to just about everyone else. Oddly enough, this is quite possibly the only band playing that style which I've found the least bit appealing. This in spite of the fact that they're clearly influenced by the likes of Disgorge [US], Devourment and Deeds of Flesh - all bands I loathe. So what's the difference here? Well, the short answer is that Defeated Sanity has brains and personality to offset their single-mindedness.

Based out of Dachsbach, Germany, this sometimes-quartet/sometimes-quintet was formed by the unlikely duo of Wolfgang Teske - a multi-instrumentalist then in his early forties [now anywhere from 53 to 56 years old, according to various accounts] and his son Lille Gruber. Teske had been a musician for over two decades, coming from primarily a jazz and progressive rock background, and had taught Gruber everything he knew. This jazz background is what lends Defeated Sanity a unique personality, manifesting itself in riffs and arrangements that venture well beyond the typical trappings of 'technical death metal', into the realms of the exploratory jazz pieces of Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk. But unlike other bands in the past that have sought to combine jazz and metal, such as the almighty Atheist, Cynic and Stargazer, Defeated Sanity wraps their jazz influence in a heavy mantle of extreme brutality, never forgetting that their primary objective is to subjugate the listener through primal force.

This tightrope act between sheer animalism and highbrow intellectualism is very impressive on principle alone. And in practice, it yields some pretty intriguing results. To the untrained ear, this album sounds like utter cacophony on first listen, but the more you listen, the more you learn to appreciate the band's seemingly freeform compositions and a riffing style that's often completely alien to the death metal genre, using harmonic intervals and progressions that are far more common to jazz. And even for those well schooled in jazz, hearing such phrasings played on guitars tuned down to C, with massive distortion and at breakneck speeds is likely to be a trip. And for those with an appetite for anything guttural, Gruber's drumming, if nothing else, will throw them for a loop, as he sprinkles in jazz rolls and fills liberally between the standard death metal repertoire of blasts and 32nd note double bass. Truly one of the most creative drummers in the genre.

As unique as it is amongst the throngs of cookie-cutter 'brutal' death metal records, though, Psalms of the Moribund has a couple of flaws that keep it from reaching that elite progressive death metal pantheon inhabited by the aforementioned Atheist, Gorguts, Immolation and early Atrocity. For one, though the free-flowing arrangements of the songs are intriguing and certainly unorthodox, there's very little in the way of actual groove here. Very few of the phrasings are repeated for more than two bars, which is sure to be a positive for some listeners, but a turn-off for many others. And when the band does settle into a groove, it's more often than not of the slam variety, complete with bass drops and chugging chords. So while Defeated Sanity's take on slam is several notches more interesting than that of, say, Devourment or Internal Bleeding, in that they incorporate a lot of atmospheric dissonance and jagged timings into their breakdowns, more grooves not of the slam variety would be very welcome.

Secondly, while DS offers up a whirlwind of constantly shifting riffs and bizarre rhythms within each individual song, the nine tracks really feel very similar to one-another. Granted, such single-mindedness is a staple of this genre, but DS is a band with enough talent to create a higher level of variety and discernible personalities for each song without sacrificing any aggression. They accomplished just that on their first full-length Prelude to the Tragedy which was similarly styled, but overall a stronger effort. Which brings us to the third problem with Psalms... - Jens Staschel's vocals. More of a nuisance than anything else, and easy enough to tune out. But his use of that abysmal inhaled style and utter lack of any sort of enunciation really makes me wish the whole album was instrumental. Markus Keller, who did the vocals on Prelude... was much more effective, though not really anything special. A band that's so unafraid to experiment deserves a vocalist who thinks similarly.

Overall, I'd put this album in the same league as Deathspell Omega's Fas and Portal's Outré. While I don't think of Psalms... as highly as I do of those two, or of its predecessor, it, too is an album reserved for those seeking the next step in extreme metal's evolution, and the patience to digest a very inaccessible but very unconventional and forward-thinking record. There's a lot of room for improvement here, but if you're not immediately turned off by the stylistic hallmarks of 'brutal' death metal [which DS twists and reconfigures as much as it embraces], you'll find a lot to get excited about here.

December 26th, 2008