Innovation is the key to separating yourself from the vast sea of redundancy. Since 2006, The Devil Wears Prada have been playing their brand of metal to an ever-growing audience. From With Roots Above and Branches Below and last year’s brutal Zombies EP, TDWP have been hard at work re-shaping their sound to make Dead Throne, their fourth full-length, their most ambitious effort to date.

So what’s different this time around? They left behind their long-time producer, Joey Sturgis, and decided to work with Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz and also brought along A Day To Remember’s Jeremy McKinnon to help on vocal melodies. What that resulted in is a near perfect album. In an interview with Lithium Magazine, singer Mike Hranica says “Our early material was dumb, plain and simple, and moving away from that, I think we’ve grown into smarter, more creative riffs, along with easier to follow songs. It’s things like that that mark the evolution of TDWP.”

As soon as you latch on to the catchy chorus and guitar sweeps on ‘Untidaled’, guitarists Jeremy DePoyster and Chris Rubey unleash a relentless beatdown. Midway into the album, listeners get a break with an ethereal and unearthly instrumentation that is ‘Kansas.’ This is right before we return with ‘Born To Lose’, one of the best tracks on the album. On ‘Constance,’ Hranica battles it out with fellow Christian metal madman, As I Lay Dying singer, Tim Lambesis.

This is their most solid work to date, largely due to producer Adam Dutkiewicz’s obsession with perfection. Every note is where it should be. The balance of heavy parts seem perfectly contrasted by the ever increasing use of melodic vocals. Very few bands have been able to drastically improve their craft but The Devil Wears Prada does a fine job doing so. Metalcore has grown up and is still pissed as ever.

-Henry Chung-

This post was written by:

Henry Chung – When Henry’s not busy updating this page and speaking in third person,he’s busy shooting and editing pictures from concerts and designing logos for bands.