After the jazz-infused extremity of 2020's The Sanguinary Impetus showed just how strange and weird Defeated Sanity could make their brand of brutality, it's something of a relief to be presented with Chronicles of Lunacy. Not because it's a step down in quality - the very idea is ridiculous! - but because the band have pulled back from the avant-garde precipice and resumed making brutal death metal at its most technical and pulverising, as they made their name doing. And, joined by ex-Pyrexia guitarist Vaughn Stoffey, Defeated Sanity are once again top of the brutal pile. The sheer focus and intensity of their music remains incredible, the opening rattle of Amputationsdrang starting from 0 to 100 immediately with a near typical surge of brutal death before expanding on and developing the formula with time changes galore and some truly fantastic musicianship.

All members more than pull their weight but the rhythm section of Jacob Schmidt's bass and Lille Gruber's drums are most impressive. The two would be worth listening to alone as plenty of sections in the album show, noodling and tapping their way through complex workouts, slowing and speeding seemingly almost at random but clearly extremely choreographed and planned. As ever, the band are expert songwriters who make each of the puzzle pieces in the form of death metal songs present intense and involving, not to mention oddly catchy and stuffed full of hooks. It may take a few listens to understand yet there's a real difference between the galloping Extrinsically Enraged and the even faster A Patriarchy Perverse, despite the relentless Suffocation-on-speed grooves and sledgehammer riffs galore in both. It's not the ingredients that differ so much as the grotesque spectacles that the band construct from them.

Hell, there's a six-minute song here, Condemned to Vascular Famine, that starts (and ends) with outright ambience before the deranged riffing begins atop drum and bass flamboyance before launching into goregrind speed. Later, it takes a trip into slam-friendly territory with breakdowns and a more abstract approach to brutality, combining to be one of the best songs from the genre this year. And even a relative death metal novice would be able to tell all three apart after some listens, despite Defeated Sanity hardly being a band that you would recommend to newcomers! The band do their thing, and we get dragged along for the ride, leaving a trail of blood and viscera to point the direction - what else could be left after listening to this, another fine album in an increasingly untouchable discography? Although the title may make it sound like a best-of collection, those death metal fans who love the genre at its most violent and brutal should be sure not to miss this one.