Album Review: DevilDriver – Strike And Kill

Album Review: DevilDriver – Strike And Kill

Reviewed by Tim Finch

Twenty four years ago, Dez Fafara started jamming with local musicians in Santa Barbara alongside his then active Coal Chamber entity. Those sessions would end up formulating what we know and love to be DevilDriver. A full ten albums later the band return once more with album number eleven, ‘Strike and Kill’.

After the dual volumes of th last release, ‘Dealing With Demons’, it is time for the band to refocus and serge forward with a new emphasis. ‘Strike and Kill’ is their launch pad for a new wave of brutality and it delivers in spades.

From the opening drum blast and trademark Fafara scream on ‘Dig Your Own Grave’ the listener is jettisoned into the DevilDriver world. The onslaught of razor sharp riffs and visceral vocals never lets up, all delivered with a hammer blow that will decimate lesser beings.

There is no let up throughout, but the band do have a knack of lulling the listener into a false sense of security. ‘Dead in The Water’ has a slow, marauding intro that seemingly is building an epic tune before the band flip you on your head and take a baseball bat to your eardrums at breakneck speed.

‘Sanctified in Scars’ adds an industrial edge and an almost Slipknot inspired foundation whilst the album builds in intensity. Each track hits faster and harder than the previous as Fafara and clan aim to destroy you at every turn. By the time ‘Never Coming Home’ lands – if you survive that long – the onslaught is unstoppable yet the introduction of some classic melo-death riffaging and even an acoustic segue cannot save you now.

DevilDriver have built a career off intense, dramatic, hard hitting songs. But ‘Strike and Kill’ takes it up a notch, or three, never giving up, never letting you go. A career defining album that will capture the hearts of fans new and old. Take a bow DevilDriver, you’ve outdone yourselves.

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