Defect Designer – Depressants

Transcending Obscurity Records’s Defect Designer have stood out throughout their career as one of the most unconventional extreme metal bands attempting to melt together disparate extremes such as technical death metal, grindcore, avant-garde metal, noise rock, and jazz within the same crucible. Especially with 2024’s “Chitin,” they transformed the idea of progressive death metal from merely lining genres up side by side into a constantly shifting yet internally coherent chaos. Melodic passages, grindcore eruptions, technical solo transitions, blast beats, and grotesque atmospheres could all coexist simultaneously within the band’s music.

The band’s fourth album, “Depressants,” pushes this approach even further. Set for release on May 15 via Transcending Obscurity Records, the album is described as a work that carries the visual chaos of Ian Miller’s cover illustration directly into its musical architecture. Throughout the record, the band unleashes a form of musical insanity that appears uncontrolled yet is deliberately sculpted. While technical death metal and grindcore still remain at the core, the songs can suddenly veer into groove-driven riffs, experimental noise or mathcore passages, cinematic sections, jazz-influenced arrangements, and even traces of country music. One of the album’s most surprising tracks is “Body Count Of My Cow Tail,” which mesmerizes from beginning to end with its female vocal performance. Appearing right in the middle of the album, the track transports the listener into another dimension with its jazz-infused structure. No information has been provided regarding the vocalist, but if that performance belongs to one half of the Dmitry-Martin duo, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised.

“Carte Blanche” in particular stands as one of the clearest examples of the band’s limitless approach. The song constantly mutates, moving from savage grindcore sections to groove-oriented transitions, from chaotic structures that feel as though they are on the verge of collapse to unexpected nods to the James Bond theme. Meanwhile, “Daily Dose of Gloom” pushes the band’s grindcore side to the forefront more aggressively, while preserving DEFECT DESIGNER’s experimental character through unusual sound effects and bizarre atmospheric details.

Briefly touching on the instrumental craftsmanship, the duo of Dmitry Sukhinin and Martin Storm-Olsen elevate the band’s creative capabilities to an entirely different level on this album. No matter which stylistic detour the band touches upon or adds to the album’s color palette, both the guitar and bass passages are executed brilliantly. In addition, drummer Eugene Ryabchenko — known from Fleshgod Apocalypse — proves to be a phenomenal fit for this mad duo.

Although “Depressants” shifts styles just as intensely as the band’s previous works “Neanderthal” and “Chitin,” this time it reaches a point where the boundaries are pushed even further. The fact that none of the tracks exceed six minutes prevents the chaos from spiraling completely out of control. Still, with a runtime surpassing 56 minutes, the album’s length may initially feel intimidating. When I first listened to the album from beginning to end, it gave me the impression that “everything imaginable was thrown into this record.” Yet the album contains so much variation and so many surprises within itself that this perception immediately dissolves. This album may resemble Bob Ross’ color palette or a musical amusement park to you, but the description that summarizes it best is undoubtedly “an entertaining chaos ruled by madness.” The journey that began in Russia under the leadership of Dmitry Sukhinin has now reached its peak in Norway with “Depressants.” And one of the most important aspects behind this achievement is the band’s ability to hold together dozens of wildly different and extreme ideas within a single body of work.

OZY