A Devil’s Dozen – Defeated Sanity

Germany’s Defeated Sanity remains one of the heaviest and most brutal death metal acts currently lingering on our pissed off planet. As such, I wish I had a dramatic story to unfurl concerning my first encounter with them that involves my head shooting straight off into the heavens, only to be punted back into our stratosphere by angry angels unimpressed by the cut of my skull’s jib. Alas, I’m not even sure I remember when that first experience occurred, where I was, and which album was responsible for my initial indoctrination. I’m guessing it was around 2008 / ‘09, so it was probably Psalms of the Moribund.

Kicking off a piece lovingly dedicated to Defeated Sanity with what looks like a modest slight ain’t exactly the smartest move, but it does set the stage for the following curious truth: What Defeated Sanity delivers… it’s a lot to absorb at first blush, and It’s honestly akin to suddenly sticking your face into a blowing fire hydrant. There are viable gripping points here and there, mind you, but the brutality is enough of a landslide that even seasoned vets who grew up addicted to the early US scenes in Florida and NY might struggle to absorb the full gist amidst opening bouts. And for anyone with little-to-no previous death metal experience? You might as well be listening to an active car crusher vehemently chewing through a ’73 LaBaron.

Suffice to say, initial exposure to Defeated Sanity should include some sort of avalanche warning, and finally cracking that seal and diving in is a bit like opening Poundora’s Box: The pummel spirits are now freeeeee! OH SHIT, THE PUMMEL SPIRITS ARE NOW FREE.

“But, like, isn’t that basically the plan for all brutal death metal bands,” asked the enlightened champion draped in a three-piece Devourment suit.

Yes. Yes, of course it is. But Defeated Sanity finds unique ways to stand out and ensure each album brings something new to the plate. Much of that is planned, fortunately, but some of it is a result of… well, unforeseen obstacles such as having six different vocalists spread across six full-lengths.

Currently, drummer extraordinaire Lille Gruber is the only recurring DS force from day one, having started the band WITH HIS FATHER, Wolfgang Teske, who somehow found a way of getting interested in the extremest of extreme metal after spending a significant portion of his life playing drums and guitar for various early psych / jazz-fusion / krautrock acts such as Muck Grohbian, Grotesk, Skipjack, et al. Father and son were a force to be reckoned with across the opening bout of Prelude to a Tragedy (2004) and its follow-up, Psalms for the Moribund (2007), but Teske soon realized that Defeated Sanity was getting more serious and more and more technical, so he bowed out in 2008 and became joyful spectator. The split was, of course, completely amicable, but very unfortunately, Teske succumbed to cancer complications at age 57 just two years after stepping away from the band.

Lille Gruber soldiered forward, and outside of the revolving door for vocalists, Defeated Sanity found a level of stability across multiple releases as bassist Jacob Schmidt and guitarist Christian Kühn settled into permanent roles, which subsequently allowed the band’s sound to evolve more into its own identity. The influence of outfits such as Suffo and Disgorge were purposely bold-faced for the earliest DS model, and it will likely always be there, but a crucial record like 2013’s Passages into Deformity shifted into something so Floridian it might as well have been classified as an even more brutal embodiment of the whirlwind debut from Deicide. From there, things got heavier (how is that possible) and proggier, manifested rather creatively via 2016’s yin-yanged Disposal of the Dead // Dharmata that pitted a side A whose gravitational pull could challenge Jupiter (and win) against a side B that delivered the closest thing Defeated Sanity has ever come to the fusion explosion of Cynic’s pivotal Focus.

Alas, ye olde membership woes reared its unfortunate head in May of 2019, when longtime guitarist Christian Kühn and Defeated Sanity amicably parted ways. A new vocalist also joined the ranks, which was of course nothing new, but without the prospect of a suitable guitarist, Gruber was forced to add the riffing role to his resume for 2020’s triumphant The Sanguinary Impetus, a record that took the two worlds explored through the 2016 split and masterfully fused them into one beautifully curved monstrosity. Big surprise: Gruber’s riff aptitude proved to nearly rival his flailing ability, but adding to Sanguinary’s overall windfall was the additional guitar shenanigan contributions from guests such as Collin Marston (Krallice, Behold the Arctopus, and nearly every other band from the U, S and A), Justin Sakogawa (Splattered), and Dan Thornton (Novena).

As for the future and where Defeated Sanity opts to go moving forward? If I were a bettin’ man, which I’m really not, I’d wager they plan on focusing even more energy on exploiting that perfect balance between brutality and innovative fusion, and moreover manage to crack the code necessary to retain a single vocalist across multiple releases. Whatever ends up gurgling to the surface henceforth, I’m sure it will of course inspire our innards to suddenly become outtards, and it will throw a whole lotta notes and mountainous left hooks in every direction. Fortunately, a patient (and masochistic) set of ears really couldn’t ask for a more delectably brutal reward.

And with that, please enjoy the following guideline to having your brain rearranged by an alarmingly ferocious force. [CAPTAIN]

NARAKA

[Passages into Deformity, 2013]

This may come as something of a shock, dear reader, but I have never had my ass kicked by Andre The Giant. Or by anyone, really, despite that I absolutely should have had my ass kicked by many people many times over many years, and by everyone within arm’s reach a few times.

I bring that up to say that I don’t really know what it’s like to have your ass kicked by Andre The Giant, but I would imagine it’s a bit like listening to Defeated Sanity, although I will also concede that my own already-silly metaphor is somewhat of a short-sell because it fails to account for the deft precision shifts and delicate jazzy influences that lurk just beneath the surface of Defeated Sanity’s incredibly impressive aggression. So maybe listening to Defeated Sanity is like… getting beaten up… by Andre The Giant… while he’s performing Swan Lake? Again, it’s conjecture here…

But imagine, then: Sheer heaviness, a sonic size that is beyond gigantic and undeniably pissed-off, perfectly executing twists and turns inside the barrage of body-shots, a dance of destruction in a intricately-arranged assault. Its sheer unrelenting aggression belies the subtle-but-noticeable beauty within its brutality, and that is both the whole of “Naraka” and of Defeated Sanity’s aesthetic as a whole.

Jacob Schmidt’s bass intro is the taunting before the beatdown, a quick flurry of a semi-melodic motif, the musical equivalent of slapping a glove across your enemy’s cheek to challenge him to a battle he cannot win. And then the whole band comes crashing down, Lille Gruber’s furious flurry of drums and Christian Kühn’s 20-ton riffs, chopping downstrokes alternating with spindly single-note runs. Settling into a series of world-crushing midsong grooves, “Naraka” outwardly displays little in the way of defined structure, but yet each of its myriad sidesteps is placed perfectly, the band in lockstep through five-minutes of one of the heaviest songs by one of the heaviest bands around. It’s not just a smackdown; it’s a performance, a thing of beauty. It’s goddamned art. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

HIDEOUSLY DISEMBODIED

[Psalms of the Moribund, 2007]

What makes “Hideously Disembodied” a standout track from 2007’s Psalm’s of the Moribund is not that it is the most brutal or the most chaotic song on an album full of brutal and chaotic songs, but rather that it is the album’s most straightforward composition. I should clarify that when I say that “Hideously Disembodied” is straightforward, I mean so strictly by Defeated Sanity standards, as by any reasonable standard, the track is not at all straightforward.

“Hideously Disembodied” begins as most Defeated Sanity songs do, with an immediate onslaught of precisely executed, but, chaotically structured brutality. After about a minute of this (by which time the band has already played three song’s worth of riffs), however, “Hideously Disembodied evolves into something significantly different. The tempo slows dramatically and the band adopts a slow, slam-death sort of groove. While this is approach is still relentlessly bludgeoning, the break from the group’s usual riff-cyclone is refreshing, if a tad jarring. Not surprisingly, the track explodes into to frantic violence again for a bit, recalling some of the riffs from the intro but, soon enough, it’s back to trudging, and the band sticks with it for a while this time, evolving the trudge into something almost atmospheric. Of course, Defeated Sanity can only restrain itself for so long, and so the band whips itself back into a properly furious maelstrom in the song’s finial minute, before a near seamless transition into “Butchered Identity”.

The lesson here, I suppose, is that there are no weaknesses in Defeated Sanity’s game; the band is mercilessly punishing at any tempo, in any meter, and at any degree of complexity. [JEREMY MORSE]

TORTURED EXISTENCE

[Prelude to the Tragedy, 2004]

Perhaps the most fun I’ve gotten out of the recent romp our little band of idiots have had with Defeated Sanity is torturing the existence of my poor editor by waiting until the very last minute to turn these blurbs in. From “What band are we doing again?” to “The intro is finished!” to “Glad we’re finally doing a Devil’s Dozen on Cannibal Corpse!” to “Whoops I accidentally deleted the entire article,” I did my very best to crush my well-meaning overlord’s spirit while having as much fun as possible. What can I say, there’s a gleeful sadism in the band’s music that brings out the absolute worst rapscallion in me.

As if I didn’t already know what to say about “Tortured Existence.” Want to know what about the band makes me feel like such a conniving, sassy little worm? Throw the song on at full blast. It’s off the debut, so it’s but a mere taste of what’s to come, yet such an irrefutable highlight of the band’s catalogue. It speaks (growls? smoulders?) as a furious statement of intent: Defeated Sanity want to pummel your body and your brain: the body with the Suffocation groove and twisted technical meat hooks of Cannibal Corpse, the brain with an instinctual feel for progressive mindfuckery that sneaks its way into the cranial mass like an undiscovered parasite.

“Tortured Existence” masterfully walks the tightrope between ignorant and intelligent. Brilliant riffcraft, cerebral moments (the backwards chanted vocals teased at the intro coming back around on the breakdown before the torturously brief solo providing emphasis to this point), coupled with on-a-dime changes that continually whip the ol’ attention span into shape barely works on paper. And yet, the song is the prime example of the band forcing a square peg through a round hole via the force of sheer, unbridled brutality. Were I given one tune to introduce a newcomer to the brain parasite of Defeated Sanity and leave them wondering “what the hell comes next?” this would be the one.

Zach, if you’re reading this (he is), I’m sorry! [RYAN TYSINGER]

ENGORGED WITH HUMILIATION

[Psalms of the Moribund, 2007]

Let’s face it: we’ve all been there. The King has up and told you that you are to bring back 56 sacks of potatoes for the feast, and despite working your nubbins to the bones, you have only been able to muster up 55 sacks of taters. Sitting there in whatever year you’re reading this you would probably think that it’s no big deal. Overlords are flexible and after all, a sack of potatoes can’t hold more than 134 unblistered potatoes anyways. What’s a few hundred potatoes short. But you don’t know my sire, and you don’t know my life. For each sack of potatoes I’m short, he will remove at least one finger and probably one toe from one of my children unless the daughter is of mating age at which point he will just take her entirely. Sure, there is a silver lining because it’s one less mouth to feed, but it’s a sure pain when my wives realize I went ahead and wasted one of their daughters with my insolent potato picking. Thus, it becomes I who am engorged with humiliation. And that’s why this song here is so powerful. Every time I hear it, I am reminded of my ineffectual work ethic, despite my more-than-sufficient bread ration and nearly lazy 19-hour work day.

As my sanity becomes defeated and the blinding pain of loss sears through my otherwise leprous body, this lovely little track creates the perfect accoutrement to my torture. As they are wont to do, the lovely folks in Defeated Sanity provide riffs that could toil away with the best serf in the field. Their drummer works harder than a gate sentry ready to pour hot oil over the heads of raging goblins trying to break into our keep. And sure, there’s a breakdown of sorts—in the world of Defeated Sanity, of course—but doesn’t everyone deserve a break? Doesn’t every good soldier have to jam a red hot poking iron into a wound on occasion? Of course he does. From the ripe age of 6 up until the old age of 31. In fact, this here song is so buttery and lovely I might just play it for the King in case he tries to take out my tongue.  [SIR WILLIAM OF UR-SAG]

CARNAL DELIVERANCE

[Chapters of Repugnance, 2010]

It’s positively embarrassing that hundreds, maybe thousands of bands are out there trying to do the brutal technical death metal thing when Defeated Sanity already put out a tune like “Carnal Deliverance.” I imagine a lot of budding slammers were downright deflated the first time they heard this, much in the same way plenty of bands were back in ‘91 the first time “Infecting the Crypts” mashed their skulls to a fine powder. This track is incomprehensibly heavy and brutal. It takes under 15 seconds to arrive at one of its many slow, brutal breakdowns, demolishing the listener with the inexorable force of a hydraulic press, before beginning a back-and-force between the trudge and some flashy tech and blasts. Before long, the track does its best impression of a minigun (blasts aren’t supposed to be that fast, Lille), drops a lot of playful rhythmic tricks, uses cymbals to simulate glass breaking, and then somehow gets even heavier than it began.

Three minutes and eight seconds. That’s all it takes for Defeated Sanity to set a new standard for brutech devastation. The real kicker is that basically every tune on Chapters of Repugnance matches this track in this department, and the band upped their game even more on Passages into Deformity. But it’s hard to think of a better nugget of all encompassing destruction to play for a friend as an introduction to this band. Friends that slam together stay together. [ZACH DUVALL]

ENTITY DISSOLVING ENTITY

[The Sanguinary Impetus, 2020]

Last time I left you it was thirteen years prior and I was engorge in humiliation. Well, reader, you might not be surprised to find out that I am now a mostly dissolved entity. Thirteen years is near a lifetime in this kingdom and I’ve suffered the loss of multiple limbs and countless injuries. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got some of the best artisans in the county working on prosthetics, so my hands are potentially even better at scooping up potatoes in the field than they were when they were shaped like actual hands. I just can’t do many things aside from picking potatoes. Which is fine because that was most of my life anyways. But of course you don’t want to sit there in your throne reading about my rise into the high culture of peasantry.

What you probably do want to hear about is the necksnapping, arm crackling, finger polishing rhythms that Defeated Sanity drop here in the year 2020. And boy are those rhythms are swirling and twirling. This here tune starts out with a stoic beat like that we’d march to just before being ordered to charge headlong into a superior army. But as the drums race and the guitar, followed by the bass, play a nifty call to action, Defeated Sanity dives right into the chaotic and brutal metal for which they are not only known, but praised. They boil that rhythm into a snarling double dip of terrorous torture before adeptly backing it down to the mere chug of a guitar and some tom rolls, and then a furious gallop of guitar riffs. Again, what makes Defeated Sanity such a great and consistent band is not that they change constantly, but more what they keep the same — always building upon the same tried and tested strategies of battle. “Long Live the Kingdom of Hanover!” [SIR WILLIAM OF UR-SAG]

VERBLENDUNG

[Passages into Deformity, 2013]

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re Paul Masvidal of the progressive metal band Cynic. It’s been a long day in the studio–at last, you’ve arrived home. You light some votives and incense, burn some sage, rinse yourself with cleansing moon water, and ponder your crystals before entering your meditation pod to unwind and re-align your chakras. Now imagine your terror as you realize a bunch of rowdy Germans have sealed you inside your sacral pod with blowtorches before going to town–battering its shell like a Saturday demolition derby matinee, warping its structural integrity and disrupting its very sacred geometry with a curated selection of sledgehammers and ball-peens of varying sizes and weights. 

That’s essentially what “Verblendung” sounds like–a variety of riffhammers from delivered from rapid punctuated attacks to total slamming weight that does some serious damage to the fluid, instinctual form of the bass lines. Of course, this isn’t nearly enough to destroy all semblance of sanity, so, for good measure (at around the two-minute mark), Defeated Sanity load the spiritual vessel into a colossal trebuchet with one hell of a breakdown. You can feel every groan of effort, every muscle bulging under strain of the labored groove as they load the catapult and, at the “environment turns into inferno!” command, launch the pod (and poor Paul) into the nearest mountain range, triggering an avalanche that twists, crushes, and maims every bit of progressive, ethereal lucidity to a pulp.

Paul, if you’re reading this (he’s not) I’m sorry! [RYAN TYSINGER]

PROPELLED INTO SACRILEGE

[The Sanguinary Impetus, 2020]

First of all, let’s all step back and appreciate the song title “Propelled into Sacrilege.” Let’s go even one further and take it literally. People are being propelled into sacrilege. Heaved into heresy. Impelled into impiety. Blasted into blasphemy. Accelerated into antichristendom. You get the picture. Whether it’s being dropped into the snakepit in Conan the Barbarian, the Event Horizon hitting warpspeed to hell, or some of the mean things people are doing to Koroks in 2023, there’s ACTION involved. Fun!

But hey, this tune… it’s a whopper. The Sanguinary Impetus saw Defeated Sanity indulging their jazz side more than any release except the intentionally Atheistic Dharmata, and “Propelled into Sacrilege” manages to push the mix of sophisticated noodling and inhuman brutality to a new limit. The beginning is a mind bending whirlwind of buzzing technicality, bludgeoning impacts, and Jacob Schmidt’s ever bubbly, mobile bass. When the verse arrives, it manages to achieve a real churn despite lots of elements threatening to break the sound barrier.

This is all impressive, but where the song wins is where Defeated Sanity often leaves their peers: the songcraft. One of the coolest tricks in “Propelled into Sacrilege” is when the band achieves almost an implied slam, setting it up as you would expect, and adding some typical slam rhythms while sticking to a total cacophony of notes. Only after this do they do the real mosh part, which again they take up a level with a real nutty “bee sting” hook, creating an effect that is as infectious as it is devastating. Get launched to the leviathan, or something. [ZACH DUVALL]

THE MESMERIZING LIGHT

[Disposal of the Dead // Dharmata, 2016]

The whole of the Disposal Of The Dead // Dharmata concept and execution is amazing, on several levels, between the “it’s two EPs!” idea and then the fact that the second of those two – Dharmata, from which “The Mesmerizing Light” is taken – is a total sideways turn into an early-90s-styled progressive death metal that eschews Defeated Sanity’s signature spinebreaking crush in favor of cleaner tones, tremolo riffs interwoven with jazzier breakdowns, midrange vocals that are clearly made by a human, a less-than-oppressive mix. Surely, if you’re a band on the creative plane that Defeated Sanity was on after the run of Psalms / Chapters / Passages, then you wouldn’t just change your sound entirely… would you?

But what’s craziest about Dharmata is that not only did these wacky German fellows do something completely different… they did it brilliantly.

Clean chords and arpeggios, a bouncy bass beneath, spacey delays… “The Mesmerizing Light” opens like it fell from Cynic’s writing sessions circa Focus, and then slides through Atheist-esque riffery and then a further step over into a sound not far from later-day Death. The riffs spin and circle; the rhythms are syncopated, a swirling barrage of drum hits and cymbal pings, jazzy and jaunty and yet still very much made from metal. Guest vocalist Max Phelps has his Schuldiner-ian bark down pat, an entirely different style from the typical Defeated Sanity grunted growls, and yet, absolutely the perfect voice for this song. But really, as with all Defeated Sanity, it’s the interlocking weaves of Kühn’s guitars and Schmidt’s bass and in the dance they do with Gruber’s jawdropping percussive performances… in there, in that middle ground, that’s where it’s truly mesmerizing. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

PERSPECTIVES

[Passages into Deformity, 2013]

As I alluded to up there for the intro to this piece, my favorite element attached to 2013’s Passages into Deformity relates to how the album so successfully incorporates the Tampa, FL death metal scene from around 1990 into the Defeated Sanity blueprint. Crank this rascal to ear-splitting levels on your stereo and I absolutely 100% guarantee a spectral version of Steve Asheim in jogging shorts and a Budweiser t-shirt will drift into the room as if by magic, and with him will come an occult bong and Scott Burns with a wide selection of Dunkaroos for everyone to enjoy. In light of this, it stands to reason that one can expect to have their face totally rearranged by an endless assault of high-velocity riffs forged from a razored thrash outline, as well as an abundance of wholly relentless drumming and vocals that sound like a 700lb ogre trying to get an old and very stubborn lawnmower started. Game, set and match, Mr. Sampras! Why did you never wear Defeated Sanity sweatpants to Wimbledon?

For its part, “Perspectives” delivers the longest song on the record, which means it’s either a ballad (wouldn’t that just be grand), contains some sort of “atmospheric stretch,” or allows for a lil proggy adventuring. It’s the latter, heroically, as the song really starts flappa-diddle-biggly-booping right around the 5-minute mark, with the earlier minutes fully devoted to the album’s overall plot to violently force blood to explode from any and all orifices within a five mile stretch. There’s an absolutely unhinged lead around 3:30 that happily throws the apple cart into the fires of Hell, and precisely one minute later, a notably indecent riff gets decorated by one of the snazziest Gruber drum patterns of the record. Basically, it’s a golden song—a song very literally forged from gold—and it does a fantastic job of summarizing everything that’s great about the full 38 minutes of Passages into Deformity in one terrifically thorough 7 minute assault.

Blasphemaaaaate meeeeee!

[CAPTAIN]

REMNANTS OF THE DEED

[Prelude to the Tragedy, 2004]

Writing about Defeated Sanity is a little bit like peeing on your neighbor’s pet alligator: you can do it, but it’s not entirely clear what you were hoping to accomplish. If Defeated Sanity’s excellence is not self-evident, it is doubtful the words of some chump are going to mend your wayward ways. Nonetheless, the penultimate song from Defeated Sanity’s nearly 20(!)-year old debut, “Remnants of the Deed,” is instructive of the band’s music in several regards. First, it is so loud and rude and fast that you might mistake just how smart it is. The band careens between lurching pinch squeals and jackhammering speed with what sounds like drunken randomness, but everything still hangs together.

Second, it’s just goddamn fun as hell. The guitars and bass often sound like some kind of rubbery wind-up toy that’s just been released, its pull-string whipping through the air as it chases after and knocks over the drumming’s pile of mismatched chopsticks. Third, it sculps confrontationally gross noises into structures resembling alien geometry. Just after the three-minute mark, the band crumbles together into a big, heaving breakdown replete with gravity-blast, but then they spend another minute+ bending and tweaking that breakdown groove into a swaying outro, pulling at the tempo, kicking out the legs, tightening up the mortar. Defeated Sanity would go on in their career to get weirder, techier, proggier, heavier, and disgustinger, but it’s testament to their demented craft that these first strikes are still so deadly. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

THE BELL

[Disposal of the Dead // Dharmata, 2016]

“The Bell” exists in that rarefied air composed of the heaviest of the heavy in all of death metal, itself the heaviest of heavy metal subgenres. Its weightiness alone justifies its inclusion in any serious consideration of Defeated Sanity’s best tracks, but “The Bell” is a top tier song regardless. Even in its relative brevity, this roughly four minute beast exemplifies everything great about one of the greatest death metal bands on the planet.

The last song on the Disposal of the Dead side and a fitting thematic segue to the Dharmata side of this famously “split” album, “The Bell” explores the bizarre practice of sokushinbutsu, or self-mummification, among Japanese Shingon monks. The ritual involved extreme self-deprivation over the course of about three years, culminating in interred meditation, during which the monk would ring the titular bell from his grave, its final silence marking death and, if worthy, transcendence. No mere schtick, the thematic content here clearly forms a framework, as the song comprises several distinct sections corresponding to both spiritual rationale and practical description, in addition to each of three stages of the process, all of it laid out in brutal lyrical detail.

Themes and lyrics and even their structure are cool and all but, as with any great song, it’s the music that makes it and “The Bell” is a masterclass of music-making, technical brutal death metal or otherwise. In the first three quarters of the song, representing everything up to final transformation, jazz structures and odd times form the cosmic current through which death metal riffs burst and charge and paint marbled light, somehow shaping a smooth and flowing course even through rhythmic turbulence and percussive convulsions.

Then, in the final minute, there rings a decidedly different tone. Here riffs and rhythm are channeled to singularity, tumult condensed to perfect form, reflecting the monk’s final mortal silence. Sokushinbutsu was, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite often unsuccessful, as the process frequently failed to fully mummify the body. But the monk of “The Bell” seems to have achieved salvation, as the second side of the album, Dharmata (referring to the truest nature of existence), is teased in the closing moments with a few prophetic technical metal riffs before it all settles to silence with the transcended monk’s meditative hum.

What a fantastic metaphor “The Bell” is for its topic. Imagine the weight of expectation for a monk on the precipice of this transformation, the implication that he already contains the light of the Buddha, if only he can prove his worth by adequately preparing his body for all time, to achieve everlasting life by denying it almost completely. [LONE WATIE]

ENGULFED IN EXCRUCIATION

[Chapters of Repugnance, 2010]

It’s a pretty safe bet that “Engulfed In Excruciation” accurately describes anyone who has ever been involved in the recording process of a Defeated Sanity song. Finger blood flying everywhere from mis-plucked bass strings; drum sticks being loosed from cramping hands into people’s eyes; barfing mouths after too many sessions of rapid-fire vokills; and bashed foreheads of engineers as the slam part kicks in and short-circuits their brain so they collapse into the monitor. I have no insider knowledge to say these things happen, but it seems EXTREMELY likely.

But what makes this particular song so likely to have ended the lives of a few people during its recording? Well, it hits an absolutely filthy Suffo-style grooving slam after a barrage of militant drumming a grand total of 30 seconds into the track. There are moments of fluttering bass paired with flailing cymbals and a blur of sword-swipe guitars that get mashed up against pure pit-killing majesty and chugging kicks. The entire song feels like a hardcore crowd getting into a fistfight that occasionally gets broken up by a tech-death twister, only for the fighters to come back dumber and angrier. It’s an unreal amalgam of swagger, muscle and rabidity.

“Engulfed In Excruciation” is sublimely ignorant with an ingenious flare for technicality, which is exactly what Defeated Sanity is at its best. [SPENCER HOTZ]