DEFEATED SANITY, the brutal technical death metal band, have announced a run of European and UK dates for spring 2027, taking place from 9 April to 8 May. The 26 shows span 15 countries as part of the 20 Years of Torment EU/UK Tour, headlined by Revocation, with Gorod and Carnosus also on the bill. On this run Defeated Sanity will play Psalms of the Moribund in its entirety.
Reports of the band’s recent shows return to the same point: the music is complex and the delivery is exact, yet nothing about it is polite. A review of their Offal Fest set in Manchester in July 2025 described a performance that was precise and feral at once, with Josh Welshman’s growls carrying live and a crowd that did not hold back. A write-up of a 2025 US date called them one of the most locked-in bands the writer had seen, noting how groove-heavy sections cut against polyrhythmic, syncopated passages.
20 Years of Torment Tour Dates:
9 April: Wiesbaden, DE @ Schlachthof
10 April: Dortmund, DE @ Junkyard
11 April: Hamburg, DE @ Logo
12 April: Gothenburg, SE @ Monument
13 April: Oslo, NO @ John Dee
14 April: Copenhagen, DK @ Vega
16 April: Berlin, DE @ SO36
17 April: Bielsko-Biała, PL @ RudeBoy Club
18 April: Prague, CZ @ Futurum
19 April: Nürnberg, DE @ Hirsch
20 April: Vienna, AT @ Arena
21 April: Munich, DE @ Hansa 39
23 April: Aarau, CH @ Kiff
24 April: Milan, IT @ Legend
25 April: Lyon, FR @ La Rayonne
26 April: Barcelona, ES @ Wolf
27 April: Madrid, ES @ Revi Live
29 April: Paris, FR @ La Machine du Moulin Rouge
30 April: Hasselt, BE @ Boostraat
1 May: Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg
3 May: London, GB @ Underworld
4 May: Glasgow, GB @ Slay
5 May: Dublin, IE @ Academy
6 May: Manchester, GB @ Rebellion
7 May: Nottingham, GB @ Rescue Rooms
8 May: Bristol, GB @ The Fleece
Tickets: https://lnk.to/TORMENTEUROPE20
The tour follows a 2025 spent on the road behind Chronicles of Lunacy, the band’s seventh album, released through Season of Mist on November 22nd, 2024, with European dates early in the year, festival appearances including Brutal Assault, and a North American run in the autumn. Recorded in New York City with producer Colin Marston at Thousand Cave Studios, the record is a deliberate return to neck-snapping brutality that still hits from every odd angle, with each of its eight songs taking on a different form of mental corruption, from religious fanaticism to the mind of a killer. Psalms of the Moribund remains the band’s touchstone for rawness, and playing it front to back sets this European return apart from a standard album-cycle tour. The line-up is Lille Gruber on drums, Jacob Schmidt on bass, Josh Welshman on vocals and Vaughn Stoffey on guitar.
Order & Stream Chronicles of Lunacy: https://orcd.co/defeatedsanitythecroniclesoflunacy
DEFEATED SANITY is unequivocally one of the most unique, boundary-pushing and crucial bands in the history of extreme death metal. Their music is as technically coherent as it is mind-bending and memorable. Endlessly replay-able and full of discovery, their maze of riffs and musical passages is inspired by infamous classic bands in the extreme metal genre, while also heavily steeped in jazz and progressive classical elements.The band consists of four members. They’re led by drummer Lille Gruber, who’s the son of deceased co-founding member Wolfgang Teske. Gruber is joined by bandmates Jacob Schmidt (bass), Josh Welshman (vocals) and Vaughn Stoffey (guitar).As well as being the drummer of Defeated Sanity, Gruber is the multi- instrumental, songwriting mastermind behind the band’s deep and compelling catalogue of songs and compositions. He possesses a bag of tricks seen nowhere else in the genre, and a musical prowess which is on full display throughout their new album Chronicles of Lunacy.
“We love experimenting”, explains drummer and founding member Lille Gruber. “But we realized that some of our oldest fans might have gotten lost after our last couple of albums. With the new one, we wanted to focus more on neck-snapping brutality”.
Chronicles of Lunacy punches you right in the face. Press play and “Amputationsdrang” already has you pinned to the mat beneath its non-stop blasts. Get comfortable, too, because Defeated Sanity don’t let the album up for air until the very end of Track 4. But turns out, acting like knuckle-dragging cavemen isn’t so easy for a band that has a Mensa-level maestro like Gruber at the controls.
At the tender age of six, Lille Gruber picked up heavy guitar and drums. Inspired by killer American BDM bands like Disgorge, Monstrosity and Brodequin, the German wunderkind recorded the band’s first demo alongside his father, Wolfgang Teske. Since Wolfgang’s passing in 2008, Gruber has composed every foul note of Defeated Sanity. Whether he’s hammering his snare, pinging between cymbals or riding a colossal groove, The Chronicles of Lunacy flows like a never-ending stream of filth.
“Lille’s drumming is just ridiculous”, Jacob Schmidt says. Schmidt – who toured with Obscura behind Cosmogenesis – joined as the other half of Defeated Sanity’s chaotic rhythm section for the band’s beloved second album. His nimble, belching bass give the new album’s lead single “The Odour of Sanctity” a dizzying bounce. “He’s the face of the franchise, so we’re never going to abandon those head-scratching moments that set Defeated Sanity apart”.
Indeed, Chronicles of Lunacy isn’t Defeated Sanity for dummies. Heck, the lyrics are wrapped up in the twisted ways that delusions can rot the human psyche. This heady concept was made flesh by none other than Jon Zig. Drawn in painstaking detail by his wicked right hand, the album’s cover shows that the birth of some ideas look an awful lot like a gory and sex-crazed nativity scene.
“Each song on Chronicles deals with a different form of mental corruption”, Josh Welshman says”. “Odour” stinks of religious fanaticism. “A Patriarchy Perverse” cracks open the mind of co-ed killer Ed Kemper, while “Extrinsically Enraged” practically foams at the mouth with squealing hammer-ons. “That one’s more literal”, says Welshman with a hearty laugh. “It’s about contracting rabies”. If it weren’t for Disposal of the Dead / Dharmata, then Defeated Sanity would’ve chewed through as many vocalists as they have albums, but after a brutal showing on their last one, Welshman is back with more guttural vengeance. His growls ooze from the pit of his gut on “Temporal Disintegration”, stomped out like the innards of a cockroach by the gravity-defying slams.
While it still hits from every odd angle, Chronicles of Lunacy does draw a jagged red line back to Defeated Sanity’s brutal origins. After all, the band now share a label with their namesake. In true, DS fashion, the first song written for this album was “Heredity Violated”, a headbanging grand finale that never stops chugging. “This album isn’t as tough on the brain as the last two”, says new guitarist Vaughn Stoffey, whose chunky riffs whip “Accelerating the Rot” into the fastest song in the band’s canon. “It’s rawer and more straightforward, which gets back to what fans love about Psalms of the Moribund”.
To dig up the sheer brutality that long-time fans have come to crave, Defeated Sanity returned to Thousand Cave Studios. New York City’s most vile underground hotspot also served as the excavation site for the Billboard-charting The Sanguinary Impetus, which shoveled a fresh layer of dirt over the “polished” production of Passages into Deformity. But the band encouraged producer Colin Marston to get down and dirty with Chronicles of Lunacy. “We still wanted some of the high fidelity that you hear on modern death metal records”, Schmidt says, “but this album has the same crushing low-end as Psalms or Chapters of Repugnance”.
The band execute this two-headed approach to monstrous effect on “Condemned to Vascular Famine”. At just under six minutes, the song delivers the longest ass beating on Chronicles of Lunacy. At times, all four members sound like they’re climbing up the walls in separate asylums, but after slipping in a brief nod to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the band come slamming down into the album’s ugliest breakdown.
“That’s one of our favorites”, the band says. “It lands at a crossroad of the DS sound that we ended up with on Chronicles of Lunacy. Even though it gets pretty fucking weird at times, there’s still an emphasis on heavy, straight-up slamming”.
None of their albums are ever going to follow a straight line, but on Chronicles of Lunacy, Defeated Sanity return to sheer brutality.
Line-up:
Lille Gruber — Drums
Jacob Schmidt — Bass
Josh Welshman — Vocals
Vaughn Stoffey — Guitar
Guest Musicians:
Danny Nelson and Paolo Paguntalan — backing vocals on “Amputationsdrang” and “Accelerating The Rot”.
Follow Defeated Sanity:
Official website: https://defeatedsanity.com/
Bandcamp: https://defeatedsanity.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DefeatedSanity
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/defeated_sanity_official
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0dy6peOuKo2QkwaNWPoJpx
Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/artist/380399
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/artist/defeated-sanity/277268753
TIDAL: https://tidal.com/browse/artist/3683042
