ALBUM REVIEW: Color Decay – The Devil Wears Prada
This may be a little controversial, but THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA must be the best band to emerge from the whole MySpace metalcore scene of the mid to late-00s at this point. Far more consistent than BRING ME THE HORIZON, and yet similarly unafraid of pushing at the limits of their sound, the American metalcore giants’ discography has been a matter of all killer no filler at least as far back as 2009’s With Roots Above And Branches Below, and even their earliest records have their moments of greatness. They’ve been on a particular hot streak of late though; the post-hardcore expanse of 2016’s Transit Blues, the more arena-ready fare of 2019’s The Act and the fan-service of last year’s ZII EP have all set a high bar ahead of the release of album number eight this Friday – one the band meet with ease.
Like The Act before it, Color Decay finds THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA essentially offering a massive, melodic take on modern metalcore that few bands do quite as well as them. It is arguably at least a touch fiercer than its predecessor, but the band still balance this out with plenty of mainstream sensibilities that should help maintain their ascent onto ever-bigger stages and into even more ears. A lot of this comes down to the continued and increasing prominence of guitarist Jeremy DePoyster’s clean vocals which carry and drive many of the anthemic choruses that populate pretty much every one of the 12 tracks on offer here. Songs like Salt and Sacrifice make loads of sense as singles, for example, but you’ll find equally memorable sing-alongs in album tracks like Noise and Broken too.
The production is top notch throughout. It gives the band a crisp, clear and muscular sound that again suits the size and scope of what it is they so clearly have their eyes on nowadays. Having long graduated from the more gimmicky Nintendo-isms of their earlier work, the band give synth player, programmer and keyboardist Jonathan Gering free reign to enrich their metallic core with expansive textures and pulsating electronics that make this record feel absolutely massive. Perhaps the only real swing and a miss along these lines is tenth track Fire. It’s easily the poppiest number on the record, and may well be a bridge too far for some as it deals in mellow synths, trappy drum beats and somewhat over-processed vocals.
Fortunately, there are more than enough riffs and ragers here to make up for that one poppy misstep. Watchtower tears past its listeners to end on one of the nastiest and most primal breakdowns on the record, tracks like Time and Hallucinate groove and chug especially hard, and frontman Mike Hranica brings an inescapable fury to proceedings from start to finish. In a genre populated by far too many sound-alikes, Hranica’s vocals are instantly recognisable and utterly feral. Few moments illustrate this better than that in the last minute or so of the aforementioned Noise in which he joins a chanting chorus of “I can’t sleep ‘cause the sky is falling / Rest in peace, the noise is calling” for one of the record’s most spine-tingling highlights of all.
More than anything else though, what really sets THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA apart on Color Decay is their ability to nail all the right emotional beats. Fifth track Broken drips with unflinching vulnerability, hitting listeners with a big melancholy chorus that sees DePoyster and Hranica confess “I know I’ve got my problems”. Elsewhere, Trapped turns outwards, its assertion of “I hate that you’re being trapped by your issues but I’m here with you” no doubt exactly the words that many of us struggling with our mental health will need to hear. The band save the biggest gut punch of all for last though; closer Cancer is fittingly devastating, this one declaring “I hope that it’s cancer and not something else / ‘Cause I don’t need any more things I don’t wanna talk about” in a chorus that should never fail to get bottom lips quivering.
Ultimately then, even if Color Decay did feel like a bit of a sure thing given the band’s recent form, the delivery here is exquisite. This is everything one could ask of a modern metalcore record; hugely melodic and memorable and yet often just as searingly heavy, with all this elevated by an intense emotional resonance, it’s yet another home run from a band who have kept in step with the evolution and growth of the genre in a manner that many others could only dream of.
Rating: 8/10
Color Decay is set for release on September 16th via Solid State Records.
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