Band:	Defiled
Album:	In Crisis
Style:	Brutal death metal
Release date:	January 2011

01. From Alpha
02. Lethal Agitator
03. Retrogression
04. Unconscious Slavery
05. Paradoxical Chaos
06. In Crisis
07. Behind You Pray
08. Resentment Without End
09. Intolerant
10. Maze Of Nescience
11. Revelation Of Doom
12. To Omega

Death metal has been around for quite a while now and production values have certainly improved over all these years. Technical death metal bands in particular often pursue a crystal-clear, sterile sound that, while admittedly being selective, also castrates their music of much of the intended brutality. This is definitely not true of Japan's Defiled because they are about as castrated as the next candidate for teenage date rapist of the year. Unfortunately, much like said date rapist, Defiled definitely should be castrated. At least a little bit...

On In Crisis, the ubiquitous broootality is achieved by what must be one of the most ridiculous production jobs in the history of death metal. While the bass is at least reasonably audible in this mix, the drums and guitars are often little more than just passages of incomprehensible noise. The vocals and any sense of dynamics and melody are completely drowned out by excessive layers of ludicrous compression, screeching sibilance and destructive distortion. This must be what going deaf sounds like. Listening to this album on any sort of portable equipment is immediately painful and not recommended. Only on a decent stationary sound system with a forgiving sound signature is it possible to endure this album for longer than a few minutes. Don't get me wrong, I can certainly appreciate raw and intentionally dirty production as it has been used on countless occasions to make many a death metal or crust band sound all the more menacing. Nevertheless, the over-the-top production here is just way too extreme and stinks of being a deliberate, yet misguided, attempt at making In Crisis sound more brutal and underground than it really is.

The sad thing about all of this is that In Crisis is in fact a pretty good album. Songs like "Lethal Agitator," "Unconscious Slavery" and "Resentment Without End" all feature a flurry of catchy, technical and dissonant riffs, as well as an appealingly chaotic rhythmic attack. The Atheist-inspired slappy bass is also a thing to behold and fans of Florida death metal would find plenty to like here. For these reasons, giving this album such a shitty production job genuinely hurts this band and will prevent them from reaching the wider audience that they deserve. My advice is to re-release this album as soon as possible with a properly mastered mix. In the state that it is now, In Crisis is completely unlistenable.