If Dez tells you Trust No One, can we trust him that he recorded another DevilDriver classic? Yes, he did, but nothing more than that. What strikes me the most is that their last album, Winter Kills, came out only two years ago, and it is the longest hiatus they have made between the two efforts. Why is that so? It’s simple: Meanwhile, Dez decided to play around with Coal Chamber. Nostalgia did not last for long.
Besides Dez Fafar, two new guys have replaced the drummer John Boecklin and the guitarist Jeff Kendrick. Now we have Neal Tiemann and Austin D’Amond who we already know from Chimaire. It seems that the new members allowed Mike Spreitzer to go wild and make Trust No One a eerie guitar heaven.
Melodeath or groove metal, and the notorious New Wave of American Heavy Metal is what DevilDriver has in its blood. Dez is far from being my favorite singer, but you need to applaud to the man who has such a recognizable vocal.
Testimony Of Truth is a zany song with a memorable riff and grandiose ending. Bad Deeds is a dark-death number, while My Night Sky has an atypical chorus. It seems like they have tried to enrich chaotic sound with guitars. DevilDriver have always been the band whose songs were difficult to differentiate, so I hope that changes in harmony and background atmosphere will make their work less ambiguous.
Overall, DevilDriver play safe. Dez throws shade, as usual. Daybreak seems like they just remembered the album Rivals. Except for short intros, this record is not going to interfere with their discography. It will allow them to continue performing as a supportive act to all the great metal bands across the universe.
Sometimes I think that groove metal should not be chaotic, while death metal should not be so groovy. DevilDriver have come close to finding the balance.
