What a time to be alive—two great grindcore albums in a week! What a shame that Wormrot will inevitably overshadow Defect Designer‘s Neanderthal, as the album is quite good. Luckily, with grind album lengths, I can always decide to consider it an EP and shoehorn it into my list of favorite EP’s. But even if not, Defect Designer easily hold their own against Wormrot—the styles are just fundamentally different approaches towards grindcore. Wormrot, also fueled by their class background and home country, have a much more song oriented approach than Defect Designer, even though they surely elevated their workmanlike aggression to high art.
Defect Designer plays a technical version of grindcore with a hefty sense of humor. I get the feeling that a lot of the songs are structured around the idea of taking a whacky musical concept and making it work as well as possible. The inclusion of a mouth harp certainly tells you that the band are willing to break conventions. But so are the melodic leads that often appear on the EP, that recall thrash metal, power metal and the guitar shredders of the 80s alike. Similarly, there is a lot of funky groove to Neanderthal with lots of syncopated start stop riffs that often play on the higher strings in unique ways. The farty fretless bass is another thing I can never get enough of in extreme metal, and here it integrates into the songs perfectly without becoming self-serving. Even though I hope you guys are diligently jamming Wormrot, don’t sleep on Defect Designer.
