UMUR "Infinite Regress" is the 6th full-length studio album by Japanese, Tokyo based death metal act Defiled. The album was released through Season of Mist in January 2020. It´s the successor to "Towards Inevitable Ruin" from 2016 and features one lineup change since the predecessor as bassist Hiroaki Sato has been replaced by Takachika Nakajima.

Stylistically the material on "Infinite Regress" are unmistakably the sound of Defiled. Brutal technical US influenced death metal with a twist. The twist consists of the fact that Defiled are inherently old school and often have more in common with acts like Autopsy and early Deceased than they have with the more technical part of the early 90s death metal scene and artists like Suffocation and Gorguts. But...Defiled still play a very technical death metal style with loads of tempo changes, unconventional riffs, and a generally adventurous approach to songwriting, so the comparison above should not be misunderstood as if this isn´t music with at least some focus on technical playing.

One of the greatest strengths of "Infinite Regress" is the raw and organic way the music is delivered. These guys are human and they want you to know it. The raw, powerful, and organic sounding production job supports that sentiment too, and "Infinite Regress" is generally far removed from most of the more clinical and sterile sounding contemporary brutal technical death metal releases. Highlights include "Divide and Conquer" (the drumming is brilliant on this one), "Tragedy" (old school to the core), and "Centuries". Predominantly because those tracks stand out as a bit different from the remaining tracks, but all material on the album are of high quality.

Upon conclusion "Infinite Regress" is through and through a high quality death metal release. It´s not often you´ll come across death metal acts with a unique sound these days, but thankfully we still have artists like Defiled to prove to the world that intriguing, adventurous, and unconventional death metal is still being produced (while still maintaining old school death metal credibility). A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.