DEVILDRIVER

After several years of battling post-Covid health issues, Dez Fafara has quite a lot to get off his chest. DEVILDRIVER's most recent brace of albums, the two-volume "Dealing With Demons" extravaganza, were a worthy addition to the band's extensive catalogue, and boasted a handful of songs that were plainly among their best. But when Dez gets really, really pissed off, the music he makes changes. Thanks to some significant lineup changes, and the arrival of ENTERPRISE EARTH guitarist (and producer) Gabe Mangold in particular, DEVILDRIVER are reborn on their 11th studio album. Not quite a wholesale return to the classic groove metal barbarity that typified early albums like "The Last Kind Words" (2007) and "The Fury Of Our Maker's Hand" (2005),but close enough to send a shiver of recognition up the fans' spines, "Strike and Kill" is the most righteously apoplectic eruption of brutality that Dez has put his name to since the grotesquely underrated "Beast" way back in 2011. If the last couple of albums were fascinating insights into DEVILDRIVER's shapeshifting instincts, this one is a nose-busting whack across the chops. No bullshit. No compromise. Just savage riffs and the reassuring sound of Dez Fafara screaming himself inside out.

Given the slightly feeble way that a lot of mainstream metal has surrendered to commercial demands in recent times, there is something hugely thrilling about the sound of this new incarnation of DEVILDRIVER in full, violent flight. The essence of the Californians' formula remains the same — a gritty collision between melodic death metal, dark thrash, murderous hardcore and gothic atmospherics — but "Strike and Kill" still feels like a leap forward, both from the eclectic bombast of "Dealing With Demons", and from the turbocharged groove metal that most defines the band's sound. A few moody intros aside, this is an absolutely relentless piece of work, with more great riffs than ever before, and an overall air of spit-spraying belligerence that makes the average modern metalcore band sound like air escaping from a balloon.

From the start, this is a savage beating for the ages. "Dig Your Own Grave" was the perfect introductory single, and it opens the album with all the subtlety of a bomb going off in a library. "Dead in the Water" is an instant anthem, and one of the most vicious songs in DEVILDRIVER's entire repertoire, while "Sanctified In Scars" keeps the carnage flying, with deft hooks and shrewd, dynamic moments adding depth to the destruction. Elsewhere, "Ride or Die" is a three-minute elbow to the windpipe, "You're Just a Ghost" brings ethereal eeriness to a claustrophobic onslaught of deathly riffing and ugly, undulating breakdowns, and the closing "All Bets are Off" brings the ceiling down with one of the most venomous statements of intent that Dez Fafara has ever unleashed.

Throughout it all, the riffs are lethal, the solos are incendiary, and Dez is audibly and unstoppably back in the game. DEVILDRIVER are back with a vengeance, and "Strike and Kill" is their best album in a very long time.