John Darnielle's review of Defeatist

There's plenty of good weird black metal here and there and some decent death metal if you dig deep enough and are willing to wade through a lot of garbage and there's the occasional artsy post-Dillinger type stuff that manages to not just grovel in the enormous shadow of Calculating Infinity and of course there's still loads of turned-up-loud slowcore much of which don't get me wrong I can totally groove on a lot of the time no matter how boring it generally is but pretty much the only stuff that seems to crack open the brainpan right now is grind. If like me you thirst for grind that reaches for the stars because it wants to burn off its own hands just to see how that would feel then I recommend the new album by these guys to you because it is a record which challenges itself to reach for excellence in the field of grind even though most of the stuff on it is two years old. It's on Willowtip and I will pretty much go to the mat for Willowtip these days because three times outta five they are bringing the hairpin-turn stuff that doesn't sound weak or contrived. This in 2009 is an accomplishment because so many records sound like the engineer was actually using his anus to move the faders. Helpful hint from LPTJ, don't use your anus to move the faders. Just listen to the new Defeatist. Thank you.