Defected Decay from Hattingen in the southern Ruhr area were founded in the summer of 2019. After their debut album "Kingdom of Sin", "Troops of Abomination" is the second work of this duo, which is also active with Suffersystem. Before that, they were musically active with Resurrected, a permanent institution in the underground, and Dark Before Dawn.
Defected Decay are a really absolutely fitting example of what great gems the underground has in store. Fans of old-school death metal will be fully satisfied with this album. Somewhere between Bolt Thrower's (also the vocals often remind of Karl Willets) powerful dragging-epic parts, Asphyx's slow, tough, dark influences, and Swedish representatives like Grave, the band can show their great abilities. Hail of Bullets or Benediction also come to mind. Recommended songs are "Resist", whose dragging beginning could also be the perfect introduction to a Bolt Thrower record, and "A last farewell", which after a quiet intro and a whispered spoken word passage begins melodically dark, even really melancholic (in the best manner of old Pyogenesis) before it then turns into rough death metal. But in the end, all songs of the album are on an equally high level.
In general, one has to praise the vocals, I have rarely heard such good death metal vocals, these are characterised by the perfect mixture of scratched manginess on the one hand and intelligibility on the other hand and come across as aggressive and multi-faceted and combine the best of the already mentioned Karl Willets and Martin van Drunen (Asphyx, Grand Supreme Blood Court, Rotten Casket, ex-Hail of Bullets, ex-Pestilence). The absolutely fitting rough production was refined by none other than Dan Swanö, known from Edge of Sanity, the Deicide worshippers Infestdead and probably thousands of other bands and projects. I'm very enthusiastic, a great record, if there should be something like approximate justice, Defected Decay should soon play a tour with the help of other musicians in the support of a big death metal band like Grave, now that more concerts are taking place again.Thematically, "Troops of Abomination" is about the horror of the Second World War, a complex of themes that has unfortunately become more current again due to recent political developments.
The album will be released in mid-July on CD and at the end of November as a two-colour gatefold vinyl limited to 100 copies on Silent Watcher Records. Absolutely recommended!