Russia has it’s fair share of musical oddities and innovation, and the fairly new band Defect Designer certainly slips in nicely to this group. ‘Wax’ is one unique creation, combining the polyrhythmic complexities of Meshuggah, the brutality of Suffocation, and the jazzy sensibilities of Atheist. This makes for a peculiar little progressive creature, which twists and turns through a variety of mind-bending song structures in its fifty minute duration. The sound, recorded in Poland’s Hertz studio, is crystal clear, which is necessary with this style, and thankfully we have a gloriously muscular bass sound from Son Razuma which bathes the otherwise quite savage sound in a gooey warmth.

The majority of this album fits in a rather mid-tempo speed category; there are some extremely fast blasts and brain drilling double kick passages, but rather than underpinning a Decrepit Birth-like array of shredding, we have clever, and frequently groovy hooks from Paul and Kirill. In fact, this entire album encapsulates the essence of intelligent metal, bringing some fairly well-trodden genres into a brand new stratosphere. Whether it be stomach-churningly slow ‘You Are No More’, the technical jazz-fusion ’Heads’, or the exotic sounding ‘Almost Ready’, which bursts completely randomly into the (correct me if I’m wrong) first ever death metal version of Jesus Christ Superstar, there is something to please absolutely everyone who likes something a little bit different. This is amongst the top technical metal debut albums of all time, and will hopefully gain some exposure even despite its fairly brutal nature. Sick, beautiful, inspired - this is as close as music, especially extreme metal, gets to art.

http://www.myspace.com/defectdesigner

James Young

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