I love Japan’s Defiled, the band always laying down pure old-school death metal with absolutely no pretense and with no try-hardness shining through; you can tell these guys live and die for this stuff. Can I tell Infinite Regress apart from their other albums? Of course not! It would probably take me five songs to even guess who this is in a blind listening test. But I still stand behind my opinion that these guys are one of the best at delivering this sort of ugly, no-frills DM, the Wes Benscoter cover art more or less letting you know what you’re in for before it starts. 

Not that there’s no variety: “Tragedy” has a great stutter-step groove, and “Centuries” has a dynamic build that most cave-dwelling OSDM bands wouldn’t even attempt. “Aftermath” almost gets tech before devolving into a caveman DM stomp und stump. In a sense, it’s hard to justify an album like this in 2020; there’s really nothing new here, but there is atmosphere and vibe, and there's tons more of both than there is on most OSDM releases. And as I’m spinning it, it’s hard to not say this is exactly what we need more of in 2020, so, for its smart 35-minute runtime, Infinite Regress delivers all the goods that us hardened DM heads will forever love and, absurd as it may be, always need more of. When it’s over, I can’t say I’m reaching for it any more or less than any other Defiled record, but, still, I can get behind this one with a solid 8.0 rating, this record exactly the sort of thing that makes death metal great, time and time again.