Year: 2025
Label: Awakening Records
Death metal is one of those genres where originality is sometimes a curse. Sometimes – oftentimes! – it’s better to stick to the established blueprint and not go out of one’s way to be original. Because the results are often pretty dismal. Of course, you could counter this with a large number of experimental and pioneering acts, but I’m going to say as a fact that for every example you can mention, there are five or more examples of bands who tried to be original and failed to be good.
Colombian Defamatory have taken this to heart. There’s very little unique or original in their sound. Instead, their focus is on taking an old school sound, keeping it old school and essentially just making something good out of it.
Defamatory’s biggest problem is just in said unoriginality, because it borders on the faceless. Path Of No Return doesn’t really sound like any one old school death metal band or album, it’s more like a generalized, nondescript mish mash of archaic death metal in general. The promo sheet throws around names like Obituary, Morbid Angel and Entombed. To some extent, all are true… but at the same time, none are. Defamatory don’t particularly sound like the above three, but in a general sense like the era of death metal these acts emerged in.
This means an obviously thrash metal influenced style of heavy, primordial death metal. Think those early acts who’d obviously listened to Slayer and figured “Let’s make something like this, but heavier and more extreme.” That’s what’s on offer on Path Of No Return: riff-driven, speedy but rarely blasting, heavy death metal.
On one hand, Defamatory’s lack of originality risks becoming self-defeating, because it extends to the songs. Even after copious spins, the tracks are a bit too samey. This is not aided by the rather monotonous vocals, which are a satisfyingly deep, cavernous growl, but essentially have but one mode. There is little expressiveness in them.
On the other, Defamatory are actually quite good at what they do. Yes, this is unoriginal, faceless and a bit too samey for its own good. But if you’re a fan of old school death metal, I’m fairly sure you will be, at least for a while, satisfied with Path Of No Return. Perhaps even impressed to begin with. The lack of memorable tracks is a drawback, but still: the Colombians know how to crank out genre adherent, capable tunes. And the sound of the album, again in a very old school vein, complements the music. Really, this could be an album from the early 90’s.
So I’m left with a bit of a conundrum as to my final verdict. Unoriginal pastiche, music that is purely derivative in one cup; in the other, material that despite the aforementioned shortcomings simply is entertaining, fun and, well, good.
And isn’t that enough, I hear some of you ask.
Well… yes, and no. Being good, delivering a solid album is of course the most important thing. And here, undeniably, Defamatory succeed. But there has to be more. Something that’s their own, something unique to its creator(s) should shine through in an artistic work. And on Path Of No Return, I really don’t hear that.
So this is the end verdict, I suppose: Path Of No Return is a fine little album, in a very superficial way. It evokes nostalgia and integral pillars of death metal with some skill, but fails to breathe a unique spirit of life into what is created from these. Path Of No Return is an album one can fully enjoy, but it doesn’t really give anything to the listener.
Only Death Is Real 