Defect Designer surprised in 2022 with their 18 minute Neanderthal EP, a snappy shot of grindcore-infused death metal. The EP had a raw sound and a pace that made it zip past pleasantly, setting expectations high for an eventual full length release. But expectations can be detrimental to enjoyment, and Chitin proves to be a much more thorny stroll through this Norwegian troll forest. This isn’t noticeable at first, as Chitin puts its best foot forward with “Uglification Spell”. This song builds up a teasing folk-like ditty before stopping to complete silence and hitting with a solid Voivod riff and groove. The teasing folk element is surely a heritage from Martin Storm-Olsen‘s time spent in Trollfest, as is the dissonant and contemplating start-stop riffs a natural dilution of Dimitri Sukhinin‘s work in Diskord. A similarly successful spirit runs through show-stopping songs like “We Prescribe” with its troll-vocals and the Diskord-infused riff monster that is “Certainty After the Kafkaesque Twist”. The soaring clean moments set to cleverly used chugging riffs in the former and the weird timing of the angular riffs in the latter shows that there are some great ideas at play in the album, despite a few of the songs on the first half following something of a formula. And despite occasionally feeling a bit aimless, the first half makes a good case for Chitin, but cracks begin to show with “Gaudy Colors From Your Plastic Bag” and forward. This song starts out with a doom-crawl before jerking things into motion with a swe-death stomp and then slowing things to a crawl, back and forth throughout the entire song. A clever trick, but this stretches into the entire back half of the album.
Chitin has some really good material, but it harbours two major flaws that ruins the experience for me. While the Neanderthal EP was a burst of grindcore mixed with death metal, the two sounds are at odds with each other here. At 41 minutes, the album doesn’t work as a grindcore record, but neither does it work like a death metal album with its start-stop nature that goes into excess on the back half. “Shine Shine” has a confounding guest feature of Björn “Speed” Strid (Soilwork, The Night Flight Orchestra) that comes across as a slow and weird The Night Flight Orchestra song because of his vocals. Despite some charm, it slows things down as do the following two songs. “Insomnia” is a seriously fun track that makes the most of its slow-fast contrasts and traditional heavy metal-feel and would be a great palette cleanser if the album had been edited better. But the choice to have all the shorter songs in the first half and all of the longer songs in the back half, while a good idea in theory to carry you through the intro songs fast, only hampers the pace with the start-stop nature of the music. The album treads mud towards the end and not even the wake-up shot of its last song can save it. Again, Chitin could be a really good album. But the choices Defect Designer have made in its overall construction make it a much lesser experience than their great EP was last year. It’s a shame as their sound, while not wholly divorced from their other bands, is unique and fun in its own right. This time, I’ll just keep the EP and keep an eye out for their next full length to bring the same flow that they’ve proved they can have.
