I really hate bringing up the ex-members of thing when talking about records. No, seriously I do. Defeatist is the perfect example as to why. When doing research for this album I found a pedigree of underground metal. Members of Anodyne and Kalibas join forces to create a grindcore band indebted to early Napalm Death and Repulsion. To someone like me that almost instantly sounds awesome. Those who know me know that I've dorked out about grindcore, particularly Scum - era Napalm Death. Needless to say, I was pretty psyched to hear what this was about. This was certainly not hurt by the fact that I count myself as a fan of both Kalibas and Anodyne as well.
To get right into business as stated before, this is a grindcore album. Grindcore is a fairly simple yet rather technical style of music to begin with. Unfortunately this also brings into effect that it makes it rather hard to differentiate band to band without something very interesting thrown into the mix. Some have thrown strains of superior subject matter, crust punk values, death, satan, and even techno splashes. So what does Defeatist bring to the table you ask? Sadly nothing, truly nothing at all is particularly different from any other grindcore band out there today.
This isn't to say the band isn't talented. To play grind to begin with takes a certain level of skill. You can certainly hear interesting riffs and talented drum fills thrown in to keep things moving. Things do certainly move at a ridiculously fast clip (twenty songs in about as many minutes). The lyrics seem to point towards a somewhat death metal influence, there also seems to be slight reference to mental illness or something of that matter, for example:
Spirits Broken, and forgotten, pumping poisons, into victims daily, this will corrupted, no resistance / Nauseous, weakened and, disjointed, heads are cut and, saved as trophies, worldwide blackout, gives rise to destruction.
For one, this is literally all of the lyrics to the song "Snuffed", not one word omitted. In addition to this fact, this is one of the longer songs lyrically on this CD. Keep in mind that this CD acts as a discography of Defeatist's twenty songs of their moderate released works thus far. These releases were originally released on Level Plane and Chainsaw Safety, but in reality this band fits into Willowtip's collective discography much better than either of the first two. One thing that is really great about this - in addition to the CD release itself - is that after having two of the releases prior that I couldn't have told you a single lyric of, Defeatist has included clearly printed lyrics.
All in all this is very competent but not quite original grindcore. I look forward to what growth they make in the future. This is a worthwhile but only vaguely interesting flashback to the recent past.
