ALBUM REVIEW: Loss – Devil Sold His Soul

Loss is a feeling so many of us suffer so often in our all too short time spent on this mortal coil. It is a feeling so few of us can truly encapsulate in any way; an experience that is as all-encompassing and engulfing as it is terrifyingly lonely, a blackhole of blurriness that breaks the very essence of our humanity down. United by their unified experiences of loss, speared on by the passing of drummer Alex Wood’s mother, DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL broke their studio silence to shape the songs that comprise their first album in nine years, the aptly-titled Loss.

Born from a band that were bringing themselves back from the brink, Loss is the continuation of the union between original vocalist Ed Gibbs and his successor Paul Green which began when DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL bought them together for the 10th anniversary tour of their genre-refining debut A Fragile Hope. Like a phoenix rising from the flames, they felt reinvigorated by the fervorous reception to their touring and found themselves putting the pieces of an album together tied up by a multitude of losses they were experiencing both as bandmates and as human beings.

Loss is as much an ode to their ambient post-hardcore past as it is a voyage into unexplored post-metal shores that shifts and shapes itself throughout it’s 10 tracks like it’s an M.C. Escher painting. On Loss, DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL create a series of soundscapes that are as akin to the sound of the sun shining in through your bedroom window on a hazy summers morning as they are to the sound of a sledgehammer rearranging the residual of your skull fragment-by-fragment. 

Tateishi is a a glittering, effervescent experience of revolving riffs and crashing cymbals akin to anything off of ROLO TOMASSI’s Time Will Die & Love Will Bury It whilst The Narcissist is a rough-and-ready post-hardcore pummel that bleeds blastbeats with the electro-infectiousness of ARCHITECTS and the insidious inflamity of EMPLOYED TO SERVE. But Not Forgotten falls somewhere in the shapeshifting spaces of blackgaze that some of DEAFHEAVEN’s more melodic cuts creates an umbrella over, brushing beautiful brutality against the barriers of your brain.

Whilst the show-stopping sensational delivery of the dual vocalists redefines once again what DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL truly stand for, it’s the goosebump-inducing performance that echoes across a lake of pittering, pattering piano on the titular closer that steals the show; if you’re not crying as the cavernous repetition of ‘I hope we meet again’ etches into your eardrums, you’ve not truly experienced the loss that lingers in each and every line. 

Across the lamenting labyrinth that is Loss, DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL delivers a career-defining collection that comes as close to capturing the ever-evolving essence and experience of loss as undergoing it’s trials and tribulations yourself. If Loss isn’t towards the top of album of the year lists come December, the Devil truly will sell his soul. 

Rating: 10/10

Loss is set for release on April 9th via Nuclear Blast Records. 

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