DEVILDRIVER's New Album To Be Mixed By ANDY SNEAP

Santa Barbara, California metallers DEVILDRIVER recently finished recording their fifth album at Sonic Ranch studios in Tornillo, Texas with producer Mark Lewis (TRIVIUM, CHIMAIRA, ALL THAT REMAINS) for a tentative early 2011 release through Roadrunner Records. According to drummer John Boecklin, acclaimed British producer Andy Sneap (MEGADETH, EXODUS, MACHINE HEAD, NEVERMORE, ARCH ENEMY) will mix the effort in late July at Andy's Backstage studio in Derbyshire, England.

Regarding the new album's musical direction, Boecklin stated, "It's interesting to me — it's not the fastest shit we have done, nor the slowest, [but it] just [has] lots of groove. But to me, when people say 'it's got groove,' I think it's a nice way of saying simple and boring these days. We wanted to avoid this.

"Our record has a great contrast of dark riffs, stomp bouncing drums with the right amount of blasts and double bass, and outstanding vocal delivery from Dez [Fafara] that takes it past your average approach of the metal attempt. I'm not talking about reinventing the wheel or nothing. I just think our new album sits in its own corner from any of our other albums."

In an interview with Metal As Fuck, Fafara stated about DEVILDRIVER's plans for its next studio album, "Record five with this band, and I've said it before, even with record five, six, seven, eight and nine, will continue to get better. Not a lot of bands can say that and not a lot of bands have done that. Most bands, by the time they've done that amount of records, they're either over it or they're not giving you the anticipation of the record release that they should. But we want to keep DEVILDRIVER fans on their feet. So every two years we're going to release a record and just continue to tour like we do, and we're booked until May 2012. Then we're going to take about six months off. That'll be the most time I've had off in about fourteen years."

DEVILDRIVER's latest CD, "Pray For Villains", sold around 14,600 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 35 on The Billboard 200 chart.