(written by Islander)
From the standpoint of a listener the idea of a band like Norway-based Defect Designer taking their music to a higher level is a bewildering concept — because their music has been so continuously bewildering. They have used death metal as a laboratory for experimentation, with results that are eccentric, subversive, unpredictable, and dazzling.
For this listener (and I suspect for all their fans), Defect Designer’s music produces big smiles. Maybe they were smiling too when they named their new album Depressants, because it is a powerful anti-depressant, no prescription needed. At least based on early listening, it also comes across as their best work yet.
Yes indeed, they have found ways to take their music to a higher level, though how to linguistically define the unconventional countours of that new plateau is no easier than it has been in the past.
We’ve premiered songs from each of Defect Designer’s last three releases, and fortune has smiled upon us because today we get to do it a fourth time, linguistic challenges and all. Speaking of linguistic challenges, the name of the song you’re about to hear is “Scorching The Rival Pogonomyrmex Burrows“.
Of course we had to look up the meaning of “Pogonomyrmex“. The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us it “is a genus of harvester ants, occurring primarily in the deserts of North, Central, and South America, with three endemic species from Haiti”. The same article explains that the name originated in the Greek language, and literally means “bearded ant”, because of a beard-like structure beneath its head that is used as a carrier of sand, seeds, and eggs.
Why did Defect Designer include the name of this creature in their song title? Here we should disclose (again as reported in the article linked above) that “Pogonomyrmex (sensu stricto) workers have the most toxic venom documented in any insects, with Pogonomyrmex maricopa being the most toxic tested thus far”; it is “comparable to cobra venom”.
And finally, “These ants dig very deep nests with many underground chambers in which they keep seeds, from which they derive food for their larvae. The areas around most Pogonomyrmex (sensu stricto) nests tend to be utterly devoid of vegetation, and are easily seen from a distance.”
Do these creatures war with each other, invading rival burrows and deploying their venom as a weapon? One might think so based on Defect Designer’s song title, and there is indeed evidence of this, including episodes of “ritual warfare”, though most of the conflicts seem correlated to defense of foraging territories from neighboring colonies.
Now that you’ve had your daily dose of entomological edification, let’s get to the song itself (though you can find a great deal more information about these ants here, should you wish to explore further).
The song immediately creates a sense of tension and anticipation with a strangely glimmering guitar, a vividly bubbling bass, chords that ominously groan and heave, and eagerly clattering drums. You can imagine the gradual approach of a hostile force.
In listening further it’s also quite easy to imagine swarming tides of gnashing and convulsing combatants, and of claustrophobic labyrinths awash in venom. The vocals howl bloody murder at the top of their lungs. The guitars deliriously dart, swirl, swarm, and viciously slash.
But, this being Defect Designer, the song is of course a weird one too. The guitars miserably squirm, feverishly throb, strangely screech, and deliriously scream. The tempos change without warning, and at one point the band lock into a head-moving riff-groove that jabs and jolts. Near the end the music seems to elevate, creating a penultimate moment of harrowing apocalyptic grandeur.
As they do throughout this album, the rhythm section also repeatedly threaten to steal the show, repeatedly loading the song with their own surprising digressions and quirks, along with heavily rumbling undercurrents, electrifying drum-fills, and magma-like bass upheavals.
Equal parts head-spinning, muscle-moving, and venomously vicious, it’s one more vivid (and technically virtuosic) sign of just how tremendous this new album really is.
This song isn’t the first one to be disclosed from Depressants. In fact, it is the fourth one. The first three were “Repeated Aversive Stimuli Inducer“, “Carte Blanche“, and “Daily Dose of Gloom” (lol). Each of those encompasses its own remarkable surprises, as you can discover for yourselves via the streams we’ve included after the links below.
The performers on the album are:
Dmitry Sukhinin (Diskord) – Vocals, guitars, bass, music, lyrics
Martin Storm-Olsen – Guitars, bass, vocals, sound engineering, lyrics, additional string instruments
Eugene Ryabchenko (Fleshgod Apocalypse) – Drums
The wild cover art is again the work of Ian Miller (Ulthar). Transcending Obscurity Records will release the album on May 15th, on CD, vinyl LP, and digital formats, with lots of apparel choices. They recommend it for fans of Diskord, Februus, Demilich, Contrastic, Swelling Repulsion, and Disharmonic Orchestra.
PRE-ORDER:
https://defectdesignerband.bandcamp.com/album/depressants
http://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
http://eu.tometal.com/
DEFECT DESIGNER:
https://www.facebook.com/defectdesigner1
https://instagram.com/defectdesigner