ALBUM REVIEW: Chronicles Of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity

Since spewing forth onto the scene in 2004, Germany’s DEFEATED SANITY have been one of death metal’s more pulverising names. Ever a popular name among bills of unreadable band logos, the band have reliably delivered over the course of their two decade career. Now, four years on from 2020’s The Sanguinary Impetus comes Chronicles Of Lunacy, and it’s not for the fainthearted.

Wasting no time in encouraging your best stank face, Chronicles Of Lunacy explodes into life in nasty fashion as Amputationsdrang flies out the gate with a cacophony of down-tuned riffage and guttural snarls from Josh Welshman, before The Odour Of Sanctity keeps the adrenaline surging through relentless slams, which hit with the weight of a freight train, and the dizzying bass-work from Jacob Schmidt is clear evidence that DEFEATED SANITY have not lost any of their technical edge.

Whereas recent albums focused more towards the band’s technical flourishes and experimentation, for the most part, Chronicles Of Lunacy sees DEFEATED SANITY return to the tried and tested formula of straight-forward slamming brutal death metal. And when the punches connect, it’s explosive. Accelerating The Rot feels like a bonafide live staple with its remorseless appetite for carnage and cleverly deployed time signature changes, whilst a one-two punch of Temporal Disintegration and Extrinsically Enraged that showcase the band at their most destructive. It is saying something that after two decades, DEFEATED SANITY still retain the same hunger to be as ferociously brutal as possible as they did back in 2004.

Lean and mean at near 34 minutes, Chronicles Of Lunacy never outstays its welcome, delivering brutality with razor-sharp precision without ever feeling too bloated or mundane. And with music as obtusely dense and brutal as this, one of the record’s biggest strengths is that it keeps the listening experience feeling fresh throughout its runtime.

Whether that’s A Patriarchy Perverse‘s clever use of pace to make the slams and breakdowns hit all the more harder, or even Condemned To Vascular Famine – the longest song on the record at exactly six minutes – which benefits from the extra space to play with and delivers some of the most interesting passages of play on the entire record, Chronicles Of Lunacy keeps landing the punches without every showing fatigue.

With little respite, Chronicles Of Lunacy is a slamming and remorseless listening experience, one in which we’ve come to expect from DEFEATED SANITY. Opting to forego the more progressive flourishes found in recent records for a no-nonsense bombardment of brutal death metal will appeal to many who have an ear for the aurally extreme, especially those who have followed the band since 2004’s punishing debut Prelude To The Tragedy. Although it falls short compared to death metal’s leading lights in 2024, it’s important to note that the benchmark has been set unfathomably high this year. Despite this, if you want your music to beat you to within an inch of your life, Chronicles Of Lunacy is the record for you.

Rating: 7/10

Chronicles Of Lunacy is out now Season Of Mist.