Defecrator hails from sunny California, but you wouldn’t come to that conclusion after hearing the band’s recent salvo care of Transylvanian Tapes, called Tales of Defecration. Fans of heavy music will like this four-track terror on cassette tape. The guitars are shoved way upfront and the mix is raw. Defecrator roar out of the gate with their first track, “Depredated,” and they barely let up through four tracks here, with nary a bomb shelter or hangar safe from obliteration.
The riffs sound like jagged scissors are forced to cut through live wire. They are so obscure, it’s hard to tell what the guitarist is doing, except that he’s occasionally playing punk-influenced chord transitions and fast downpicks with little care for guitar acrobatics. Heavy and distorted, the guitar riffs set the stage for much of the music on Tales of Defecration. The snare drums endure some heavy hits, and the vocals never so much as lighten up throughout the brief runtime. Fans of most metal bands will stare at their speakers in disbelief, but fans of really raw, really heavy war/death metal will take this tape along for a ride straight into the San Andreas faultline for an unmitigated disaster.
The band briefly slow down on track three, “Purged,” but the band mostly leave the slow sections for the killer choruses. Track four is a fast-paced Impaled Nazarene cover that merges war metal with heavy doses of punk. You won’t hear the bass drum kicks on this tape. It’s often a dense wall of noise on blastbeat sections, and the snare hits and hi-hat smashes are the most obvious signs of percussion here. Otherwise, the record is loud, heavy, fast and sounds like a live take in the studio that results in the studio going up into a mushroom cloud. Cvlt Nation fans will know what to expect on a record we describe to this effect. Melodic, prog, mainstream black/death fans be warned.
No intros, outros, interludes, or self-indulgent mood-manipulating theatrics found here. It’s a guitar, bass, drums, vocals record that has little inclination for mainstream music in general. If you like heavy music that blazes through transitions like the club is on fire, get this. If you like scales, arpeggios, or backing string sections, you’ll think this record was recorded in a funnel cloud. Desperate heavy, intense music-seekers need not apply.
