No strangers to taking their time between releases, veteran death metalers Defiled released their sixth full length album, Infinite Regress, on January 24th, 2020 through Season of Mist. It's a lovely addition to this years new metal releases as I'm a sucker for dark and dirty death metal, and Defiled check most if not all of the boxes I look for.
Infinite Regress is good, really good. When bands have been around as long as Defiled have (est 1992) sometimes they start to feel a bit stagnant, looking at you Cannibal Corpse. Luckily that's not the case here, though old fans will see the differences. A big difference you'll notice if you're familiar with their prior work is the level of production quality jumped a whole hell of a lot from Towards Inevitable Ruin to Infinite Regress. The record still has the dirty feel to it that I enjoy in my death metal, it just has a more refined feel to it is all. You can thank the godfather of Florida death metal for that, Jim Morrison of Morrisound Studios out of Tampa (bless you).
The substance of the material, however, has not improved on quite the same level as the sound has. On prior LPs from Defiled I felt, for a death/grind band, the explosiveness of grind wasn't well represented, nor were the typical death tropes either. Infinite Regress is still a decent album, if not a bit stagnant for ideas. As far as extreme metal goes, Infinite Regress may not the most chaotic, the fastest or filthiest. It is however still a good death/grind album, well thought out with some catchy riffs and passages. While they are not looking to rewrite what death metal/grindcore is and isn't, Defiled march ever onward. I look forward to hearing what they'll do next!
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