Thoughts carved by parasitic social engineering are not created devoid of will rather they are dependent on flood-irrigated delusion being allow to pool over and over ’til gnarled alienated thoughts gradually erode one’s idealized sense of self. For this seventh full-length album from Berlin, Germany-borne technical brutal death metal quartet DEFEATED SANITY we are tasked with viewing the hive mind as a tortured monstrosity splattered on a putrid dungeon floor, harassed into beastdom and demented by a loss of will. In depicting psychic descent and physical collapse ‘Chronicles of Lunacy‘ appears to reach a primal state which looks back to the band’s general point of origin without any amnesia for roughly three decades of steady ascent toward infamy. What sounds like a prime-era brutal death classic at face value is actually wriggling with thousand-armed detailing, a not-too well hidden capability which towers above and beyond most any given peer. The unholy imbalance achieved between referential sound design and still-evolved finesse in hand offers a humble form of mastery, a new standard for an old ideal.

Defeated Sanity were one of few truly primal entities to rise unto underground prestige as the tail-end of brutal death metal’s late 90’s ’til mid-2000’s boon of originality had been entirely sapped. Built from genuine interest in ‘old school’ brutal death metal songcraft (Suffocation, Cryptopsy, et al.), mutations of classical music theory, myriad technique-based obsessions and a clear love for jazz fusion their basal entity was able to recognize the importance of Disgorge and Deeds of Flesh as the highest most lasting standard and from my point of view they’d earned contemporary status quickly but seemingly a generation later. Their own take on this style evolved through legendary wares, rightfully earning their notability through works I’d generally detailed for a review of their sixth and most technical, mind-bendingly abstract record to date (‘The Sanguinary Impetus‘, 2020). You probably don’t need to jam on that album for context here, maybe a sense of contrast and brain-scrambling high level technical ability since you’ll be better served brushing up on their more classicist, blunt and bruising 2004-2010 era in preparation for this new record.

That isn’t intuition talking, either, Defeated Sanity‘ve specifically named ‘Psalms of the Moribund‘ (2007) as a key reference for ‘Chronicles of Lunacy‘. This should be easily read as a circle back rather than a regression, a redirect to hard lean into the prime era of brutal death metal that’d birthed their sound. To be clear that doesn’t mean the band’s partnership with thee Colin Marston for all manner of engineering and production aimed for a return to naiveté or to “dumb down” back to the late 2000’s but to instead pull from that part of their oeuvre and basically run a victory lap so foul it kinda kills everything else brutal death related out this year. Consider it similar to what Severe Torture and Malignancy have done upon return where both their point of origin remains visible but all available experience is still on task; In this sense they’ve introduced new guitarist Vaughn Stoffey, who’d joined back in 2022 as a live fixture and contributes to some of the songwriting here, at a crucial point of pivot with a Defeated Sanity record most likely to be a crowd pleaser at face value. If you are looking for the next evolutionary step from these guys I’d still suggested that this is in fact a mind-numbingly faceted brutal death record for those keen on obsessing over every note available.

There’s no way anyone considers early Defeated Sanity simple or overtly straight forward so much as rooted in classic forms but if we’re going back to the spiritus of their first two records the important thing to note here is that ‘Chronicles of Lunacy‘ isn’t a nostalgic downgrade. Precise but organic in its natural drum-lead movement and congested with gore in terms of the scooped and rotten guitar sound they’ve nailed that feeling without reeling all the way back to a more compressed age when the default settings on ProTools were king. Likewise there’ll be no feigning ignorance, that’d never been their style and not to mention both bassist Jacob Schmidt and drummer/main songwriter Lille Gruber (Ingurgitating Oblivion) are among the best of all time in their category. Point being that there’s no going back in terms of the insane level of tact, compositional detail and personalized technique available to the rhythm section here. Anyone who knows their shit walking up to this album expects inhuman rhythms to carry this thing a la ‘She Lay Gutted‘ and whatnot but from folks who know when to hit a slam, when to work in their surreal tech-death sensibilities and how to make a brutish dungeon-ass rush of a death metal record inherently progressive without cueing in the listener outright.

All of these factors come into play immediately as we feel the pinging swat of opener “Amputationsdrang” and bleed right into the more Deeds feeling chunks of “The Odour of Sanctity” appreciating the extra dexterity from Schmidt in the co-pen role as well as the rattling percussive action that carries the bigger moments of those first six minutes. Defeated Sanity have always insisted that they’re not out to dilute and reduce death metal via populist revisionism (re: deathcore, faux ‘old school’ popcorn brutality, slam, etc.) but as we step into the heat of this record you’ll still feel more than Gruber‘s grip of the drums infusing every congested phrase with some manner of interest finding a swelling point around Side A endpoint “Temporal Disintegration” as one of the longer more playfully structured pieces on the album, fine punctuation for that first half and a place to take a deep breath in preparation for an even more engaging flipside.

The stuff that took a real bite out of me mostly hit on Side B with the chunking furor of “Extrinsically Enraged” bleeding of a far more ruthless forgotten era. The hyper-manic blasting movements around ~2:40 minutes in grab ahold of a piece of the Defeated Sanity signature and exaggerating the chaotic effect of it to the point that it makes a pretty straight forward crawler of a song an event, a ripper to open the second half. The real gold here is split between the unique drumming found on “Condemned to Vascular Famine” the longest and probably most atmospherically charged piece on ‘Chronicles of Lunacy‘ which reflects the more patient development of “Temporal Disintegration” before it. Letting the kit ring with its harmonic damage/room noise and working through wormed-out, groove heavy riffs. At some point I am basically describing a swarm of locusts here as all thoughts are rapid-fire on ‘Chronicles of Lunacy” through the end where “Heredity Violated” feels like the final shot to shake their blood completely loose via gravity blasted whips and higher level rhythmic frustration ripping through its length.

On one hand some of the material on this album feels like stuff Defeated Sanity could do in their sleep, purely kinetic movements crafted with brutality and a very limited scope of third-gen brutal death tradition in mind. Brutal doesn’t necessarily equate with stupid or lazy shit in this case though these songs are meant to rocket through and stampede the listener rather than keep them eternally guessing, as was the case with ‘The Sanguinary Impetus‘ and its wild shots taken. I’d walked away from that previous album in a surreal state of awe and abrasion, unsure if it was to wildly raw and experimental to hold water with me but now that I see a full-turn of style back to these folks’ roots it is easier to appreciate the mastery of these forms for the athletic and elastic charges that they are while also seeing the previous album as a just as viable path forward.

The obvious note to take here is that this’ll be an album for folks who’ve been fucking with Defeated Sanity from the start just as well as it might appeal to folks who need that gateway back to the last real explosion of creativity brutal death has had in the last couple of decades. A die-hard yet adventurous band is the right vehicle for this type of ‘blunt on approach, deeply detailed in hindsight’ album and it makes additional sense as their first record with a new guitarist and as a new signing for a larger label. If I had one criticism of this album it’d be just as obvious, this was a fool-proof plan, a bit of a nostalgia grab, and the album will be an easy crowd pleaser for the sake of very few brutal death bands still existing on this level with any sort of authenticity left. For my own taste ‘Chronicles of Lunacy‘ was exactly what I didn’t know I’d wanted from these folks, something “new but old”, and I couldn’t be more impressed at how the whole tightly-wrapped mastery of it all comes together in just about ~35 minutes. A very high recommendation.

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