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Ever since their maniacal mastermind picked up his first pair of sticks at the tender age of six, Defeated Sanity have found newly inventive ways to spin death metal on its deformed head. This band of technical headbangers have broken onto the Billboard charts with jazz-infused chaos and even recorded a proggy split with…themselves?

But on their upcoming seventh album, Defeated Sanity are returning to the brutal slamming that cemented their legacy. The latest single off Chronicles of Lunacy is still plenty twisted, but “Accelerating the Rot” now stands as one of the fastest songs in the band’s history. 

The video for “Accelerating the Rot” was created by Obscenery Films.

Chronicles of Lunacy comes out November 22 on Season of Mist.

Pre-order & Pre-save at https://orcd.co/defeatedsanitythecroniclesoflunacy

Over the past 30-odd years, many esteemed vocalists have cycled in and out of Defeated Sanity. However, after a satisfyingly gruesome performance on their last album, Josh Welshman is back for Chronicles of Lunacy. His foul emanations bring a refreshing air of continuity. “Each song on the album delves into a different form of mental corruption”, Welshman says.

The album’s lead single stunk of religious fanaticism, but “Accelerating the Rot” races like the mind of a vigilante whose idea of justice is more than a little warped. “One by one, I decimate the miasmic masses“, Welshman roars above a bass line that scrambles all over the fretboard like a blood-hungry tick.

When it comes to death metal, Defeated Sanity understand that there’s more than one way to deliver a brutal beating. After all, the band’s mastermind is one of the world’s sickest drummers. Since his father’s passing in 2010, Lille Gruber has composed the bulk of their imposing discography.

“We love experimenting”, Gruber explains. Even though “Accelerating the Rot” is just a few scraggly chin beard hairs over three minutes long, he never stops switching between different blistering tempos. And yet – whether he’s blasting, pinging or flaying his snare, the song never loses its oddball bounce.    

“Lille’s drumming is just ridiculous”, says bassist Jacob Schmidt. “He’s still the face of the franchise, so we’re never going to abandon those head-scratching moments that have always set Defeated Sanity apart”. 

The band’s previous single crept and crawled into the album’s most slam-heavy breakdown. Thanks to its lurching groove, the breakdown on the latest single from Chronicles of Lunacy will still scrunch plenty of noses, but “Accelerating the Rot” punches the gas and heads straight for the loony bin. Their maniacal timekeeper is still working the controls, but the blinding pace is set by new guitarist Vaughn Stoffey, who chews through chunky shredding and squeals of dissonance with fresh fingers.       

“Accelerating the Rot is one of the fastest songs in Defeated Sanity’s history”, Stoffey says. “It gets back to the sheer brutality that fans love about Psalms of the Moribund and Chapters of Repugnance“.

Tracklist
1. Amputationsdrang (2:30)
2. The Odour Of Sanctity (3:36) [WATCH]
3. Accelerating The Rot (3:22) [WATCH]
4. Temporal Disintegration (5:52) [WATCH]
5. Extrinsically Enraged (4:09)
6. A Patriarchy Perverse (4:16)
7. Condemned to Vascular Famine (6:00)
8. Heredity Violated (3:48)
Total runtime: 33:35

he underground lost their collective mind when Defeated Sanity announced Chronicles of Lunacy. Metalheads couldn’t wait to bang heads over the first pressing of their new album. Several of the color variants are already sold out, but anyone who missed out isn’t condemned to suffer in silence.

The second pressing of Chronicles of Lunacy is now available for pre-order. This pressing includes a transparent lime  variant that’s exclusive to the Season of Mist webstore. Don’t wait! This variant is limited to 150 copies. 

Can’t wait for your pre-order? RSVP for Defeated Sanity’s upcoming Bandcamp Listening Party. Chat with the band and listen to all of Chronicles of Lunacy two weeks before the album comes out.

Chronicles of Lunacy Bandcamp Listening Party
Thursday, November 7 @ 9 pm Eastern Time
RSVP

To celebrate Chronicles of Lunacy, Defeated Sanity are embarking on their first headlining tour of Europe since 2018. They’ll be performing songs off their brutal new album alongside Wisconsin’s Putrid Pile and To Violently Vomit Forth, a tribute to Disgorge that features current and former members of the legendary BDM band.

Iniquitous Savagery, Strangle Wire, Asylum and Embryonic Devourment round out the two legs of this stacked bill.

Defeated Sanity Chronicles of Lunacy 2025 European Tour
23 January – Wolfburg, DE @ Jugendhaus OST*
24 January – Hambourg, DE @ Bambi Galore*
25 January – Copenhagen, DE @ Temple of Doom*
26 January – Dyestad, SE @ Dyestads Bygata*
27 January – Stockholm, SE @ Kollektivet Livet*
28 January – Aalborg, DK @ Studenterhuset*
29 January – Tilburg, NL @ Hall of Fame*
30 January – Lille, FR @ The Black Lab*
31 January – Paris, FR @ Glazart*
1 February – Basel, CH @ Kaschemme Basel*
2 February – Milan, IT @ Slaughter Club*
3 February- Graz, AT @ Explosiv*
4 February – Vienna, AT @ Escape^
5 February – Zagreb, HR @ Klub Močvara^
6 February – Budapest, HU @ Dürer Kert^
7 February – Belgrade, RS @ Dorcol Platz^
8 February – Sofia, BG @ Oldskulls Club^
9 February – Varna,BG @ Club Smile^
10 February – Bucharest, RO @ Quantic^
11 February – Cluj-Napoca, RO @ Flying Circus^
12 February – Košice, SK @ Collosseum Club^
13 February – Prague, CZ @ Modrá Vopice^
14 February – Bielsko-Biala, PL @ Rudeboy Club^
15 February – Berlin, DE @ Orwohaus^
* with Iniquitous Savagery, Strangle Wire
^ with Asylum, Embryonic Devourment

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 2010, Gruber has taken on the bulk of the composing for 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”.  “Odor” 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. 

Lineup
Josh Welshman – Vocals
Vaughn Stoffey – Guitars
Jacob Schmidt – Bass
Lille Gruber – Drums

Guest musicians
Danny Nelson and Paolo Paguntalan provide backup vocals on “Amputationsdrang” and “Accelerating the Rot”

Recording Studio
Thousand Caves Studio in January 2024.

Production
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Colin Marston.
Produced by Colin Marston and Defeated Sanity.

Cover Art
Artwork by Jon Zig
Title lettering by Liz Schmidt
Layout by Alex Eckman-Lawn

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