Dead To Rights signals the intentions of this album with menacing ferocity. It’s a wild ride of jagged, muscular riffing, alternating blast and heavy groove. The problem is that the intensity level is maintained for virtually the entire 12 tracks on offer here and it wears you down. It also has the effect of having one track blend into the next, almost indistinguishable from one another. You know this is the case when you’ve listened to the album end to end – or very close to – six or seven times minimum and this feeling doesn’t change. Little individual character between the tunes begins to emerge; virtually each and every track is a three-and-a-half to five minute blast of double bass drumming, wall of sound guitars and howling, melody-free vocals.
It seems that, with record sales on a very steady downward curve, musicians such as main man Dez Fafara have long come to the conclusion that the live arena is where it’s at for bands like Devildriver, and they write their music purely with that in mind. They want to create unrelenting music that causes crowds to erupt in a circle pit moshing frenzy, and keeps punters coming back for more of the same. So seemingly very little effort is put into creating dynamics, variation or light and shade. There are no ‘sound scapes’ here, just wall-to-wall brute force and music that causes live venues and festivals to go off.
Of course, if you love that idea of nothing but sheer brutality, or are a hardcore Devildriver freak, Beast will absolutely rock your world. The playing is strong, the production is monstrous and Dez howls his lungs up like a man possessed. Beast is an animal of a record.
