Devil Ate My Son "The Eyes of a Dead Man" CD
[Burning Season]
Damn, this German band's debut marks the best release yet from the Burning Season camp. It's basically melodic Swedish styled death metalcore, but the recording, layout, and songwriting are all superior to most of this stuff. The vocals are great screams/yells with a lot of clarity and texture, the guitar tone is heavy and crisp, the percussion has a good level of resonance happening, and the mix is damn strong. A touch more bass would be cool, but this sounds light years more professional than the majority of such bands that cross my path. As far as the writing goes, it's not terribly original at this point, they hit on everything from tremolo picking and clean passages to breakdowns and some singing vocals, however the arrangements are more linear and forceful. There's no chaotic mess, they keep things focused, and "In This Torment" opens with a pretty interesting clean passage before gradually shifting over into an awesome traditional metalcore chord progression that has more of that heavy old school sound. And shit, any band of this ilk that can pull off a 6+ minute track without it getting boring has something going for 'em (and in fact the two best tracks herein both top six minutes). I'm definitely appreciative of the fact that their harmonies are strong, but more so that the clean parts aren't generic or forced, and they use singing vocals tastefully, so it's not like every song has singing in it, nor do they only use singing in choruses. "E.O.A.D.M." is shorter and has some thrashy riffing, while "Shiftworker" is a bit more moderately paced and driving, with some of the most emphatic dual guitar interaction. "Arson" even has a few rocked out sort of rhythms and some open clean passages that have a spacey vibe - more surprises. Excellent fucking layout on this thing, too. The colors are bright, the text bold... it all really catches the eye and looks awesome. The lyrics are overlapped in two different fonts, only one of which is truly legible (intentional), and there's a lot of layered sort of imagery as well - I have no complaints. The lyrics are a mix of the personal and a few hints at larger topics, so it's 50/50 as far as what I like and what I don't, but they do certainly have their moments: "We are the targets of the warlords. Their fire burns us to ashes. Where is the sense in all of this killing? A game of power on both sides. We are the ashes." This is definitely very promising for its genre. I'm not totally blown away, and they could do with a bit more originality as far as pushing to blend their influences even more, but this is very good work. Now, the only question that remains: What the hell's up with that band name!? (7/10)
Running time - 24:07, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: In This Torment, Arson]
Burning Season Records - http://www.burningseasonrecords.com

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