Embedded Files
DEFECT DESIGNER “Depressants”
DEFECT DESIGNER “Depressants”
By Dr. Abner Mality
It’s my third dance with DEFECT DESIGNER and I must say, it’s getting hard to keep up with it all. They started out whacky on “Neanderthal”, got even more avant-garde on “Chitin” and on “Depressants”, they are crazier than a shithouse rat. Have they finally crossed the line into the totally incomprehensible?
Amazingly enough, they still manage to have moments of catchiness and entertainment here…God knows how they do it! The record’s title doesn’t fit, because there’s a feeling of almost happy delirium about the music as it careens from style to style like a pinball. The general tone seems to be playful and upbeat. DEFECT DESIGNER is still rooted in extreme metal and the opening tracks are whacked out tech-death fused with madhouse grindcore. One thing that keeps this from going overboard is that there are no half hour long bloated epics like we got on the new CRYPTIC SHIFT album. No tune exceeds six minutes here. I hesitate to say the album “flows”, but it does manage to keep its wheels on the road.
As the record lurches onward, the stylistic shifts become more pronounced. The idiotically titled “Body Count Of My Cow Tail” marks an extreme break with what has gone before, as it is a jazzy kind of torch song featuring seductive female vocals. Who the singer is here, the press sheet doesn’t see fit to tell us. But it is really a jolt hearing a song like this on the same effort that boasts the crushing grindcore of “Carte Blanche”. That’s the only song with this ingenue on it, but the vocals do squirm and shift a lot here.
This review would be 3 pages long if I described all the stylistic shifts in minute detail. Suffice to say, “Depressants” actually sounds the way the cover art looks…an explosion of colorful extremity. Noise rock plays a bigger part than ever before…”Expiration Referral Request Denied” and “I Heard Robespierre Screamed Like A Bitch” prove that…and there are some cinematic elements as well, best heard on “As The Terra Cotta Dust Settles”. Thank God there was no rap here, but I think just about everything else made it in, including country music on “The Inevitable Mad Composite”.
You should know by now if this record is for you or not. I have to admit, I preferred “Neanderthal” and “Chitin” to “Depressants”, but DEFECT DESIGNER are still astonishing in how they can keep this craziness from blowing up completely.
Report abuse