Album review: DevilDriver – Strike And Kill

You said you wanted metal, right? Some 23 years after their debut, this renewed, revived version of DevilDriver has a point to prove. Metal, undoubtedly, is what this is. Tag it as groove metal, technical metal or melodeath if you must, but at its core this return is simply metallic as steel, riff-and-solo packed and burning with blackened brutality.

Featuring a much-altered line-up, one that includes the return of original bassist Jon Miller, Strike And Kill is an album in which frontman and sole constant Dez Fafara is playing all his cards. This feels like a last chance saloon, and Dez – now 60, incredibly – is as explosive as ever on the opening pairing of Dig Your Own Grave and Dead In The Water. The latter features heroic drumming from Davier Pérez, performing on his first DevilDriver album.

Then there’s near industrial colours pooling beneath Sanctified In Scars, while Headed For The Fall and Never Coming Home mount ear-grabbing, part-sung hooks over tectonic shifts of guitar heft. Dez is his usual throat-busting self, and you begin to lose count of how often Davier and guitar duo Alex Lee and Gabe Mangold, also relative newcomers, effectively save the day with their savage tapestries. Ride Or Die is another high point, DevilDriver at their most direct, little bits of everything that make them good.

While it’s a fact that this band is never going to be ‘clever’ or experimental, they here serve up a neat distillation of what they’ve spent decades perfecting. Strike And Kill has many attributes – stellar musicianship, planet-breaking production, consistent writing – but its biggest strength is sheer relentlessness. It’s a 51-minute barrage on the senses. Yes, it treads familiar territory throughout but it’s not so much knocking on those same doors as plunging fists through the woodwork. All a bit much? Careful what you wish for.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Machine Head, Slipknot, Arch Enemy

Strike And Kill is released on July 10 via Napalm