DEVILDRIVER: PRAY FOR VILLAINS
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If I were 17 years old Devildriver would be my favorite band in the world. I would be out with my friends at all their shows with my Devildriver shirt on raging about how my parents don’t understand me and how I was gonna make those “damn jocks pay”. The problem is I’m not 17 and I’m figuring anybody older than that with any kind of discernable musical taste will find Devildriver’s fourth full length album “Pray For Villains” the bland musical equivalent of fat-free mayonnaise.
For those unaware Devildriver is the brainchild of ex-Coal Chamber vocalist Dez Fafara. Let’s be brutally honest here, Coal Chamber were an awful band that had zero to offer even the most basic music fan. Devildriver is a much better band than Coal Chamber even if they aren’t much more interesting. There’s an entire crop of bands like this who have taken too many cues from Pantera, White Zombie and then tried to assimilate Death Metal into their act for a touch of rebellion. The guitars are fast, the bass is nonexistent, and the drums chug along with hyper-quick double bass while Fafara screams really basic lyrics about life and loss.
Bands like Devildriver are really more about creating theme music to a scene than trying to push ideas forward. Pray For Villains is the music that would emanate from a portable radio situated deep inside the teenage heavy metal hang out spot. This is music for young men to beat their chests to and stomp around acting aggressively to hide their feelings of unworthiness or being unwanted. Girls in leather and denim would giggle and laugh as the “leader” of this group drank beer, started fights and talked about how amped he was to go to the Devildriver show next weekend. I don’t begrudge any of this, scene theme music is a necessary niche it just doesn’t interest me.
The really odd thing with Devildriver is that the guys who write and play the actual music sometimes drop hints that they really know how to crank out quality metal. None of this is envelope pushing but the musical work behind songs like “Back With A Vengeance”, “Bitter Pill” and the title track is actually kind of cool. It’s really Fafara’s vocals that give the entire project a very High School Talent Show kind of vibe.
Between his paint-by-numbers “Death Metal” growl and lyrics such as “You gotta pay with your heart and soul” or “Forgiveness is a six gun teach me how to shoot” Fafara adds nothing to Devildriver other than a name. Do the guys behind Fafara think that the once known singer of a flash-in-the-pan Nu-Metal outfit is going to bring them fame and fortune?
If bands like Shadows Fall, Lamb Of God or The Devil Wears Prada really do it for you than Devildriver might be just up your alley. Like I said this isn’t awful it’s just really boring, almost pointless to anybody looking for the boundaries of extreme music to be stretched into the next dimension. If I were the “band” part of Devildriver I’d separate from Fafara and strike out on my own. If they can get their drummer to do something a bit more interesting than fast double bass and the occasional watered down Dave Lombardo fill these guys might just kick ass. If not I’m sure they will be extremely successful giving teenage boys a reason to thrust the metal horns into the air and shout “F**K YEAH!! That was AWESOME!!”
