Defects have released Artificial Icons through Mascot Records and put out a lyric video for "Critic", which is the heaviest thing on it and the pettiest, in the way that usually produces the best hardcore adjacent songs.
"This came from seeing someone slate the band online, telling people not to check out our music. I was pissed," said Tony Maue. "The anger is obvious, but writing it out felt like a release. It's raw, confrontational, and honest."
Eleven songs, produced by Jim Pinder, whose recent work includes Sleep Token and Bring Me the Horizon, and that hand shows in how much room the clean choruses get between the breakdowns. "Signs", with Matt Heafy of Trivium on it, is the one most people arrived through, and it is set in a war.
It follows Modern Error from 2024 and the Dream Awake EP before that, and lands straight off a UK run with Allegaeon and Gorod. The band have opened for Trivium, Northlane, Orbit Culture and In Flames, and have worked through most of the European festival circuit in two years.