Defiled return with their eight full-length release to date ‘Horror Beyond Horror’, out on Season of Mist. The band is most known for being Japan’s longest running Death Metal act. Their sound can be described as chaotic Death Metal played technical flair. Despite their long-running career, the band never really seem to have made it to the big league. Moreover, I have rarely heard anyone mentioning Defiled being among their favourites.
Anyhow, ‘Horror Beyond Horror’ is further solidifying Defiled’s status and benchmark sound. All fourteen tracks display a wicked approach to Death Metal that is borderline avant-garde at times. Defiled utilizes a lot of unsettling melodies in their riffs, honing the grotesque side of Death Metal. Another standout aspect to Defiled’s music is their incorporation of odd time signatures. These not only give the band its chaotic nature, but too take some time to getting used to. The chaotic nature of most songs might leave listeners on the edge of their seat, but it might just as well put off others. Perhaps that’s the reason why Defiled is mostly left in the shadows.
The production is on the weaker side for a Death Metal record. The sheer intensity of the instrumentals is thus not fully represented in the sonic soundscape. On the whole, it sound very clean but it lacks punch and grittiness in my opinion. The kit sounds very dry and snappy and the guitars do have a layer of distortion but it feels rather lacklustre. For a band that is singed (and has been signed for 25 years) to Season of Mist, I would’ve loved to see the label invest more in the production of Defiled’s music. The vocals, however, are in coherence to the thin production. Shinichiro Hamada delivers an effective death growl, but it’s not nearly as thick as the majority of growlers. I can’t help but think of Angela Gossow’s throat when listening to his offerings (which is not altogether bad in my bad though).
So far we’ve got a record that filled with spastic Death Metal from a band that has a credible legacy, but a record that falls short in terms of production values. To that I would like to add that ‘Horror Beyond Horror’ is above all an interesting listening experience. Defiled does go out of their way to stay true to their own sound, no matter the reigning trends within the genre. At heart this is a really fun record that underlines that Death Metal is far from the straightforward entity it’s slowly becoming. It might have parallels with more prominent bands within the genre like Defeated Sanity or Cryptopsy, despite falling short when it comes to bludgeoning brutality. Defiled is an entity that is different from all contenders, but still manages to never sway away from true Death Metal. The only aspect I would like to see from them in the future is a more thickly produced record.
