DEFECTO – Duality

Duality, the third album from Denmark’s Defecto, is a thematic concept album taking inspiration from both “personal and external events” dealing with “both the light and dark sides of human existence”. Since their formation in 2011, Defecto has been honing their craft, building a large European audience, and continuing to expand and experiment with the full Melodic Metal sound they first presented on their 2016 debut Excluded.

Opener “Rings Of Saturn” is designed to impress, a bravura performance that rides an epic riff and multiple changes into an equally majestic choral section before flying into a short solo. Newest addition to the band Mikkel Christensen makes his presence felt early and often on a song that manages to be both catchy and filled with variety. There’s scarcely a pause between “Rings of Saturn” and “The Uninvited”, a track where Nicklas Sonne’s gruff vocal brings us to “the dark side of human existence”. Defecto has their own sound, but there are touches of a wide range of powerful bands like Testament, Sepultura and Disturbed in the mix–at least until we hit the first solos, which on this track are pure blistering Power/Melodic Metal.

Niklas Sonne’s ability to change the tone and timbre of his voice to match the emotional thrust of the individual songs is laudable. Lead single “Rise” brings listeners back to the positive, light side of the Duality being explored, in a rousing anthem that seems almost conventional after its two predecessors. “Paradigm Of Deceit” brings the tempo down to Emo-ish levels in a song about lost love, but Defecto wisely bring the fire back with “All For You”. Defecto abjure lengthy pauses between tracks; the album is paced so there’s a single beat between tracks.

“Condemned” hits hard, with Frederik Møller on guitar and Thomas Bartholin on bass combining to form a killer avalanche of sound that Christensen anchors so that Sonne can sail above. There’s more space in the closing numbers of the album; “Washed Away”, “Tempest”, and final cut “Don’t Say Goodbye” all have more air than the wall-of-sound type numbers at the front of the album. The drums and karate chop guitar riffs have all but disappeared on “Don’t Say Goodbye”, replaced by gentle piano and sweeping vocal harmonics. This coda, the eleventh song on the album, may be intended to balance out the light/dark duality of the previous ten songs, a way of being both somber yet hopeful.

Defecto do an exceptional job of exploring their theme on Duality; walking a line where the dark doesn’t overwhelm the light or vice-versa. They bring equal energy, enthusiasm, and invention to the songs falling on either side of the coin, faithfully performing an intricate balancing act that works both conceptually and emotively on this solid slate of tunes.