AN NCS PREMIERE: DEFECT DESIGNER — “GAUDY COLOURS FROM YOUR PLASTIC BAG”

Jan 262024

This isn’t our site’s first encounter with Norway-based Defect Designer. The last time, in the context of premiering a track from their 2022 EP Neanderthal, we attempted to prepare people by explaining that the group “revel in severely discombobulating their listeners, and beating them almost senseless”.

Even Ian Miller‘s utterly bizarre cover art for that EP was only a hint of the sounds behind it, a “mutated and marauding amalgam of grindcore and death metal that’s as relentlessly head-spinning as it is viscerally obliterating”.

Now Defect Designer are returning, with a third full-length named Chitin that’s set for release on March 14th by Transcending Obscurity Records. What can you expect this time? In a nutshell, more madness, but mutated yet again.

For the new album Defect Designer have slimmed down to a three-piece, with founders Dmitry Sukhinin (Diskord) (guitars, vocals) and Martin Storm-Olsen (bass, vocals) joined by new drummer Eugene Ryabchenko (Fleshgod Apocalypse).

As Transcending Obscurity reports about the new record:

The grind urgency has since been supplanted with more of a thrashy influence and sees the death metal part of their sound getting more pronounced along with their innate, irrepressible flair for progressive experimentation. The music is just as wild, imaginative and colourful as you would expect from them, and much like their Ian Miller artwork, it has mind-boggling intricate details.

And yes, Ian Miller is responsible for the cover art again. Still bizarre, though not as macabre as the Neanderthal cover, but what could be?

As for the music, the most attentive listeners have already discovered streams of four tracks from the dozen that populate the new album, and today we’re presenting a fifth. Speaking of which, now would be a good time to crack open a fifth of something liquor-ish, to help enjoy the experience, or survive it.

You can tell from the name of this newest song — “Gaudy Colours From Your Plastic Bag” — that Defect Designer really aren’t very interested in honoring hoary death metal tropes. The music certainly isn’t bog-standard death metal.

There’s no good way of guessing how this song unfolds. The tempos and moods switch in unexpected ways, and so do the manifold instrumental maneuvers that occur across the channels. At first it builds from a dismal amalgam of squirming and wailing guitars into a frenzy of viciousness launched above a subterranean bass in earthquake mode and brutish percussive hammering.

Then the rhythm spurs into a gallop and the fretted instruments jitter and jolt while the vocals vent monstrous growls. The guitars drag and scrape, the bass starts murmuring and weaving through the mewling and misery-steeped weirdness of the guitars, and the drums erupt in frantic bursts.

Near the middle the music lumbers and stomps like a primitive hulking beast. After that the drums gallop again and the beast dissolves into a pack of squirming and screeching sprites. And after that you might imagine fat worms slithering as the growls crack open into screams and the bass surfaces, lost in its own intriguing world.

One more surprise awaits at the end: All the familiar instruments vanish, and it sounds like a devil-child experimenting with toy chimes.

As wordy as that introduction has been, it still doesn’t touch on everything that happens. If you’re not left bewildered and smiling after this musical menagerie has escaped into your senses, we’ll be surprised.

We mentioned that four other songs from the new album are out in the world, rampaging, and we’ve included streams of all those below: “To Ziggurat“, “We Will Need Your Chitin“, “Insomnia“, and “Certainty After The Kafkaesque Twist“.

We’ll also mention that one of the album tracks that hasn’t yet been made public, “Shine Shine“, features guest vocals by Soilwork‘s Björn Strid. We’ll further mention that T.O. recommends the album for fans of Diskord, Atvm, Februus, Demilich, Contrastic, Swelling Repulsion, and Disharmonic Orchestra.