DevilDriver  —  Strike and Kill Review

Review by Kirsty Middlemist

There’s a bracing honesty to a band that tells you exactly what it intends to do to you right there in the title. Strike and Kill, DevilDriver’s eleventh full-length, offers no preamble and no apology — and true to its name, it hits first and never bothers asking questions afterward.

A confession before we go any further: this isn’t our natural terrain. Groove metal, melodic death, blackened everything — it sits a fair distance from the shelf we usually reach for. So read what follows as the verdict of a curious outsider rather than a card-carrying devotee. That caveat matters, because a good deal of what we might raise as a reservation is precisely what the faithful will chalk up as a selling point.

Consider yourself warned about the opening. “Dig Your Own Grave” arrives with the subtlety of a kicked-in door — a barrage of machine-gun double kicks and thick, churning riffs that grab you by the collar before you’ve had a chance to settle. There’s no easing-in period, no polite fade. Turn it on at the wrong volume and it will genuinely rearrange your morning. As a mission statement it’s ruthlessly effective; you know within fifteen seconds exactly what kind of record this is going to be.

What’s beyond question across all thirteen tracks is the sheer quality of the musicianship. This is a tight, formidably capable band. The guitar pairing of Alex Lee and Gabe Mangold trades brute force for genuine melody more often than you’d expect, threading bright, harmonised leads through cuts like “In the Moonlight” and “Never Coming Home” that lift the material above pure aggression. Drummer Davier Perez is a marvel — the speed and precision on the title track and on more technical pieces like “Headed for the Fall” and “You’re Just a Ghost” is genuinely dizzying. And the return of founding bassist Jon Miller gives the low end a real anchoring weight. On craft alone, there’s nothing here to fault.

The one track that reached across the aisle and grabbed us was “Sanctified in Scars.” Its industrial, pulsing backbone and eerie atmospherics gave it a shape and identity that lodged in the memory — it reminded us, more than a little, of Slipknot’s “Psychosocial,” which in our book is high praise indeed. If the rest of the album had chased that same balance of hook and heaviness, we suspect we’d be writing a rather different review.

Because here is where personal taste has to be honest. Frontman Dez Fafara is clearly a man of total conviction, and his delivery is the venomous, blackened snarl the genre demands — but it simply isn’t a voice that connects for us. That’s a matter of ears, not ability; devotees will find exactly the ferocity they came for. Our bigger stumbling block is that, for all the variety the band has plainly built in — you can hear the different ideas, the shifts in tempo and texture — the overall experience lands as relentlessly of a piece. The volume, the intensity and the darkness barely let up from front to back, and across a full sitting the individual songs began, for us, to blur into one continuous assault. We came away without a single track beyond “Sanctified in Scars” that planted its flag and demanded to be sought out on its own.

To be scrupulously fair, that relentlessness is plainly the point. This is an album built to be an unbroken barrage, and on those terms it succeeds completely. “Ride or Die” throws itself forward on pure momentum; “Shut the Silence On” and “Oath of Iron” pile on thrashy, muscular riffing and blast beats; and closer “All Bets Are Off” brings the whole thing crashing down in suitably cataclysmic fashion. A fan of the genre isn’t looking for a breather — they’re looking for exactly this kind of sustained, uncompromising intensity, and Strike and Kill delivers it in spades.

There is one genuine moment of daylight. “Summoning Shadows” opens with textured acoustic guitars and a real sense of space, and for a hopeful minute or two we thought a shaft of light was about to break through the relentless dark. It’s beautifully handled — a proper display of dynamics. But by the time the chorus lands, normal service has firmly resumed and the band comes crashing back in at full tilt. Those craving contrast may wish that quieter promise had been allowed to breathe a little longer; those who want the carnage will be delighted it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

So where does that leave us? Strike and Kill is a confident, expertly played, relentlessly energetic record from a band who know exactly who they are and feel no obligation whatsoever to soften their edges for newcomers. That it didn’t fully win us over says far more about the distance between this genre and our own listening habits than about any shortcoming in the album itself. Everything DevilDriver set out to do here, they do with total commitment and considerable skill.

If groove metal and its blackened, death-tinged cousins are your world, this is an easy recommendation — a ferocious, tightly executed addition to an already imposing catalogue that longtime fans will devour whole. If, like us, you’re a visitor from gentler climes, approach with respect, keep the volume sensible, and don’t be surprised if “Sanctified in Scars” is the one that follows you home.

Strike And Kill Tracklisting:

1. Dig Your Own Grave
2. Dead In The Water
3. Sanctified In Scars
4. Strike And Kill
5. In The Moonlight
6. Ride Or Die
7. Headed For The Fall
8. Shut The Silence On
9. Never Coming Home
10. Summoning Shadows
11. You’re Just A Ghost
12. Oath Of Iron
13. All Bets Are Off