Ethereal Metal

Ryan Murray | Co-Owner | Chief Editor | Contributor | Photographer

r.m.music84@gmail

There’s a storm brewing in Copenhagen and its name is Defecto. For over a decade, this band has been quietly shaping the future of modern metal, blending cinematic scope with razor-edged precision. But Echoes of Isolation isn’t just another chapter, it’s a detonation. Out Friday, October 31st via Frontiers Music, this record is an unflinching descent into the psyche, where melody meets madness, and every riff feels like it’s clawing at the walls of the mind. It’s fierce, unrelenting, and heartbreakingly human. This is the sound of a band standing at the edge of their own creation, staring straight into the abyss and daring it to blink first.

From the first seconds of The Unraveling Defecto make one thing clear: this is not a metal album content to skim the surface. It’s a plunge. The opener feels like the beginning of psychological collapse, with metal as diagnosis and confession. Sonne’s voice cuts through the mix with commanding intensity, and as the guitars coil around each other, it feels like being pulled under by your own reflection. The album’s concept, each track embodying a separate psychological struggle comes to life immediately, and it doesn’t let up.

That storm bleeds directly into Eternal Descent, which mirrors The Unraveling’s chaos but adds a cyclical, insomnia-like pulse. Together, they’re the inhale and exhale of the same crisis: one disintegrating, one spinning endlessly. Sonne’s vocals soar above riffs that feel like a body caught between rest and panic, while Morten Gade Sørensen’s drumming adds an almost ritualistic rhythm. If The Unraveling cracks open the psyche, Eternal Descent is what happens when you can’t shut the door again. The transition between them feels like a descent into sleepless delirium, one track begging for relief, the next mocking the very idea of it.

And then comes Sacred Alignment, the record’s thematic pivot point. Its surgical precision and looped rhythmic patterns capture the suffocating repetition of obsessive thought. When paired against Eclipsed By The Void, the contrast is stunning: one is pure control, the other pure collapse. Sacred Alignment sounds like compulsion dressed as discipline, while Eclipsed by the Void unravels into cosmic despair. Together they form the album’s emotional axis — one building walls, the other tearing them down. The way Sonne alternates between near-operatic vocals and guttural screams is chilling; it’s less performance, more possession.

By this point, Defecto’s mastery of tension and release becomes apparent. Heart on Fire and Quantum Abyss share a dialogue between emotion and intellect, where passion fights calculation. Heart on Fire bursts through with cinematic fervor, the kind of track that lifts you out of your seat and leaves your pulse in freefall. Sonne’s chorus lines are practically anthemic, igniting the album’s most melodic stretch. But Quantum Abyss twists that warmth into something more cerebral, with tempo shifts and angular riffs that distort time itself. The songs function like mirror images: one burns, the other freezes. Together, they embody the dual nature of trauma, how it can make you both hyperalive and hollowed out.

Then there’s the late-album triptych: Through Cloak and Bones, Shattered Reality, and the title track and album closer Echoes of Isolation. This final arc feels less like a conclusion and more like a reckoning. Through Cloak and Bones brings the album’s harshest vocal moments, channeling paranoia and dissociation through jagged guitar work and blast-beat precision. Shattered Reality follows like the hangover after emotional collapse. It’s slower, darker, but oddly beautiful. Its chorus hangs in the air like a memory refusing to fade. And when Echoes of Isolation finally arrives, the band brings every weapon they have to bear: the symphonic swells, the melodic grandeur, the bruising riffs. Sonne’s final vocal passage isn’t a cry for help, I it’s a declaration. It’s the sound of someone crawling through the ruins of their own mind and finding purpose in the debris.

Across these nine songs, Defecto prove that progressive metal doesn’t need to choose between precision and passion. The band fuses them seamlessly, technical brilliance rendered through emotional storytelling. Every song feels handcrafted, every transition purposeful. The symphonic undercurrent gives the record a cinematic depth, but the guitars never lose their teeth. Bartholin’s bass work glues the chaos together, grounding the album’s shifting tempos with muscular grace, while Sørensen’s drumming explodes in controlled violence. The result is a record that moves like a living organism that’s breathing, breaking, and healing.

Sonne’s vocal performance anchors it all. His clean tones soar without losing grit, while his harshed growls erupt like the shadow self finally stepping forward. What makes him magnetic isn’t just range, it’s conviction. You believe every syllable, every whisper, every scream. He isn’t acting out mental turmoil; he’s excavating it. There’s a raw, unguarded quality in his delivery that ties the entire concept together, transforming the record from music into catharsis.

Where Echoes of Isolation truly shines is in how it makes you feel the concept rather than merely understand it. When Sacred Alignment tightens its grip, you feel the suffocation. When Eternal Descent hits its climactic chorus, you feel the exhaustion of sleeplessness. When Echoes of Isolation fades out, you feel the aftershock of silence. Defecto have achieved that rare alchemy where structure and emotion amplify each other instead of competing. The production, likewise, captures that duality, which is crisp and expansive, yet intimate enough to let even the smallest vocal inflection cut through the wall of sound.

This is, by far, Defecto’s most personal and devastatingly powerful record to date. They’ve built their reputation on technical prowess and melodic precision, but here they channel that mastery into something more human. It’s progressive metal sharpened by empathy, and it’s an album that holds a mirror to the listener and dares you not to look away.

Echoes of Isolation is not for background listening. It’s an experience that demands surrender. It’s the kind of record that leaves scars, but beautiful ones. It’s a haunting, cinematic odyssey through the mind. Defecto transform pain into power and isolation into art.

VERDICT: 4.5/5

‘Echoes of Isolation’ our Friday, October 31st via Frontiers Music!