DEFACED — Forging the Sanctuary (review)

DEFACED — Forging the Sanctuary album cover Album · 2015 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
UMUR
"Forging the Sanctuary" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Swiss, Berne based death metal act Defaced. The album was released through Rising Nemesis Records in January 2015. Defaced was formed in 2012, and released the "On the Frontline" debut album that same year. The band was known as Trigger Tones in the 2006 - 2012 period.

Stylistically the music on the album is death metal with both high pitched black metal type vocals and deep unintelligible growling vocals. The sections with the former type vocals remind me a bit of an artist like Aurora Borealis, but overall I wouldn´t call the music on the album blackened death metal. It´s more a rather brutal type of death metal delivered with great technical skill and performed with fierce conviction. There´s a good amount of tempo changes in the music although Defaced seldom play anything slower than a brutal mid-paced groove, and most of their time is spend blasting away or just playing really fast.

Just because it´s a relatively brutal type of death metal it doesn´t mean it´s completely devoid of melodic sensibility or variation (which is something I often find makes brutal death metal releases a tedious listen), as there is actually some great semi-melodic moments featured on the album, and the rhythmic variation within and between tracks is also on the plus side when it comes to the diversity of the album. A few more catchy recognisable moments could have made the music even more interesting, but repeated spins do reveal more hooks than inital listens might.

The greatest strength of the album is the relentless aggression and extremely powerful and skillful delivery of the music, which is further enhanced by an incredibly powerful and well sounding production. The sound on this album is a real death metal jaw-dropper. So all in all Defaced has created a really great death metal release with "Forging the Sanctuary". Strong compositions, great musicianship, and an outstanding production job combined, result in a highly recommendable album and a 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.
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UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Not the most original sounding release, but it´s got other great Things going for it, that elevates it to a high quality level. I like this one...
Nightfly wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Sounds like my kind of stuff, going to check these guys out. Great review Jonas!

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