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Defleshed: Reclaim the beat
10/11/11 || BamaHammer
Defleshed’s “Reclaim the Beat” is definitely not an album for everyone, but if you give this disc a spin and you survive, you’ll know after the first thirty seconds of the opener, the fittingly-titled “Stripped to the Bone,” if it’s for you or not. This is 36 minutes of top-notch, razor-sharp, high-speed, death-thrash as finely as it has ever been performed. Defleshed was a band with a perfect name. After listening to these fuckers, you will honestly feel as though your figurative skin has been flayed from your figurative bones. And it feels great.
I discovered these crazy bastards back in 2005 with the release of this album, which still stands as far-and-away their best effort, despite it being their last. The band called it quits a mere sixth months after the album’s release. What’s so impressive about this record is its pure relentlessness. The riffs are aggressive, unyielding, and consistently in your face, almost to a fault. If you could pin any weakness on this release, it would have to be the fact that it’s almost just too damned brutal.
The guitars are nothing short of jaw dropping on the record as well. Just the surgical precision with which the goofily-named Hell Y. Hansen operates is stunning considering how tightly every part is performed on every track. All the tremolo picking and palm mutes possesses a certain ripping quality that the ace production really brings to the forefront. There’s nothing flashy or overly impressive about the guitar parts. You’re not going to find any virtuosic leads or fancy solos, just groovy-ass riffs that will tear you apart while you shake your booty and bang your head.
Gustaf Jorde’s vocals are some of the best this death-thrash variety of metal has ever heard. They’re piercing but not in a shrill, annoying way, but in more of a malicious, cruel tone that just adds to the overall ripping and tearing of the album’s sound. On their previous releases “Royal Straight Flush” and “Fast Forward”, Jorde seemed to progress and develop his style, and he demonstrates it here on “Reclaim the Beat” to the point of ultimate perfection. He even pulled off a cover of Mötley Crüe’s “Red Hot” which not only did it justice, it blew the original version and Vince Neil away.
This album’s brutality actually begins and ends with the drumming. Matte Modin is insanely talented, and his style on this album is the single most unique drum sound of the decade, a constant rolling and churning that drives the music and accents the riffing in a way that is just distinctively Defleshed, and it’s easy to see how Modin was driving force being Dark Funeral’s “Diabolis Interium”, another one of the best albums of the last decade. Just hearing the snare in a few parts could give you tendinitis. Defleshed were one of the few bands out there that you always knew exactly who they were the second you first heard them. They discovered their own rhythmic formula for balancing undeniable groove with breakneck speed, and they finely perfected their brand of death metal science with this release.
The only real fault with this album is the monotony. Despite its short length, it never lets up one bit, and it gives you a damn good pummeling for every second it’s playing. Those same drums that are so interestingly unique at first will begin to wear you down just because this band is just so damned vicious, and after any relentless beating, the tenth punch starts to feel (and sound) a lot like the first couple. However, when taken in moderation, Defleshed is some of the best thrashy death metal you can find, even comparable to, if not better than, The Crown in their prime. Just trust me. This shit is pretty fucken good.
After hearing how good these guys were, it’s sad and a little disconcerting that they decided to call it a career when they did. Then again, they did manage to go out on a very high note here, but I just wish they had stuck around to keep tearing more meat off our bones.
If you’re looking to be completely torn to shreds by an album that is the sonic equivalent to a pile of bloody bodies being fed into a table saw, accept no substitute.
- Information
- Released: 2005
- Label: Regain Records
- Website: N/A
- Band
- Gustaf Jorde: vocals, bass
- Hell Y. Hansen: guitars
- Matte Modin: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Stripped to the Bone
- 02. Abstinence for Turbulence
- 03. Chain Reaction
- 04. Bulldozed (Back to Basic)
- 05. Under Destruction
- 06. Grind and Rewind
- 07. Reclaim the Beat
- 08. Red Hot (Mötley Crüe cover)
- 09. May the Flesh Be With You
- 10. Ignorance is Bliss
- 11. Aggroculture
- 12. Over and Out
