{"id":14522,"date":"2013-08-27T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T00:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=14522"},"modified":"2013-10-01T20:08:35","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T20:08:35","slug":"album-review-devildriver-winter-kills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-devildriver-winter-kills\/","title":{"rendered":"DEVILDRIVER – Winter Kills (2013) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

DEVILDRIVER
Winter Kills<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nNapalm (2013)<\/span>
Rating: 8.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to believe that DevilDriver\u2019s sixth album is upon us. When the Southern California band, fronted by then ex-Coal Chamber mainman Dez Fafara, hit the scene most extreme metal fans were apprehensive at best. Fafara and company have proven over the years though that they are one of the most relentless bands alive, consistently delivering top notch metal and building a sizeable fanbase through their non-stop touring and festival appearances.<\/p>\n

Recently, a Coal Chamber reunion and a split from Roadrunner Records have left fans wondering what\u2019s next. Winter Kills<\/em>, the band\u2019s debut for Napalm Records, is what\u2019s next. And, well, for the most part it\u2026 kills. <\/p>\n

What immediately caught my attention here was the less polished sound. DevilDriver sound really raw on Winter Kills, unlike the thick production of Beast<\/em> (2011). While all of DevilDriver\u2019s records are aggressive, this one has a ferocity to it that we haven\u2019t really heard since the band\u2019s sophomore album The Fury Of Our Maker\u2019s Hand<\/em> (2005). <\/p>\n

Case in point is \u2018Oath Of The Abyss\u2019, a song chock full of guitar groove and drumming that refuses to stay still for more than a moment at a time. Atop it all is Fafara\u2019s spit-filled vocals, landing somewhere between a shriek and a grunt but always sounding like he means it. \u2018Curses And Epitaphs\u2019 and \u2018Carings Overkill\u2019 have a bit more melody in the guitars and doesn\u2019t quite move with the same fury. However, they ably back up the same ideal. <\/p>\n

\u2018Winter Kills\u2019 does its job well here, proving itself worthy of the album\u2019s title. It has more of a focused groove than the other tracks and is a bit easier to really latch onto during Winter Kills<\/em>\u2019 first go round. The platter\u2019s ending track, \u2018Sail\u2019, is something new for the band, offering up a swaying slab of metal that finds Fafara finding a bluesy scream that is punctuated by more lead guitar work in one song than the rest of the opus combined. While I wouldn\u2019t necessarily want to hear a whole record of this, it punctuates the rest of Winter Kills<\/em> quite well. <\/p>\n

Not everything here is perfect and, like any DevilDriver (or a million other bands) album, there are a few tracks you\u2019ll skip over after the first couple of listens. For the most part though, changes have been good for these guys. They sound ferocious again, and it\u2019s hard to argue with the idea that this is their best release to date.<\/p>\n

Mark Fisher<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DEVILDRIVERWinter Kills Napalm (2013)Rating: 8.5\/10 It\u2019s hard to believe that DevilDriver\u2019s sixth album is upon us. When the Southern California band, fronted by then ex-Coal Chamber mainman Dez Fafara, hit the scene most extreme metal fans were apprehensive at best. Fafara and company have proven over the years though that they are one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-devildriver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14522"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14527,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14522\/revisions\/14527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}