HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Pray For Villains – DevilDriver

Seventeen years down the line, and YouTube user brucewayne420’s upload of DEVILDRIVER at Download Festival 2007 remains on the video sharing website. On what would be the last year that the second stage at Donington Park was in a tent, the groove metal bludgeoners from Santa Barbara, CA would go down in history with their attempt to create the world’s biggest circle pit – Guinness World Records may not have verified it, but it became one of the festival’s highlights for that year and put the band on the lips of the UK, thus setting themselves up for a bumper fourth album that celebrated its fifteenth birthday last month; the still excellent Pray For Villains.

To be fair, the hype surrounding DEVILDRIVER was already on a speedy upward trajectory. They had formed in 2002 under the leadership of Dez Fafara, then still the frontman of nu-metal icons COAL CHAMBER, when he moved from Orange County in California to Santa Barbara and began jamming with musicians he met at several barbecues he hosted. Completing the original lineup were guitarists Evan Pitts and Jeff Kendrick, bassist Jon Miller and drummer John Boecklin; shortly after the release of their self-titled debut in the autumn of 2003, Pitts would be replaced by Mike Spreitzer and form the ‘classic’ lineup that would go on to release four records together.

At the time of Pray For Villains, the band’s follow-ups to their debut – 2005’s The Fury of Our Maker’s Hand and 2007’s The Last Kind Words – had meant the wheels were fully in motion, with such anthems as Clouds Over California, End Of The Line and Meet The Wretched delighting fans of other groove laden groups like MACHINE HEAD and LAMB OF GOD (the latter song would be the soundtrack of choice to their attempts at getting large groups of people to run fast and bear left). They had also gained exposure through their cover of IRON MAIDEN’s Wasted Years for a Kerrang! compilation and – more famously – with their songs Devil’s Son and Driving Down The Darkness featuring in US medical sitcom Scrubs, playing through the speakers of delivery driver Lloyd’s van.

Produced by Logan Mader of – appropriately – MACHINE HEAD fame, along with additional guitar duties by the legendary Andy Sneap, Pray For Villains was announced in April of 2009, with the title track released on May 21st. The opening song to the album, it remains a hugely impressive track, Mader’s production job still as crisp a decade-and-a-half after its initial release. The other dozen tracks still hold up too, to the point that there are certain sectors of the metal community who consider this DEVILDRIVER’s peak and that they’ve never quite reached the same heights in subsequent years. For an album so visceral, its choruses are incredibly catchy; Dez’s vocals might be growled, but they’re clean enough to allow the likes of Pure Sincerity and I’ve Been Sober to be returned by a fervent crowd with interest.

There was also a wide range of subject matters, from the personal to the fictional and the joyous, for listeners to digest. Forgiveness Is A Six Gun is believed to be about The Dark Tower series of novels by Stephen King while Waiting for November takes a more heartfelt route as it talks about the funeral of Fafara’s mother-in-law. However, purely because of the city it references, it will come as no surprise that the full-throttle Another Night In London would make the most waves on these shores, bolstered by its music video shot over two nights at the capital’s legendary Garage when the band supported the album on a UK tour that had no fewer than four supports in BEHEMOTH, SUICIDE SILENCE, TRIGGER THE BLOODSHED and MALEFICE.

Released on July 14th, Pray For Villains would sell 14,600 copies in the US on its release week and sit pretty at No. 35 on the Billboard 200; it would, however, enter at No. 4 on the US Top Hard Rock Albums, a position it would replicate in the UK version of the same charts. The album would garner strong reviews, with both Blabbermouth and Metal Hammer giving the record scores of 9/10. “Pray For Villains is DEVILERIVER’s jackpot moment…this album is going to blow your fucking head off” gushed esteemed journalist Dom Lawson in the latter; that same issue saw the review of their performance at that year’s edition of Download cite them as ‘metal’s most fearsome live band’ and that ‘if they continue to deliver sets as tight and brutal as today’s they’re sure to take over the plant. A month later, the band were gracing the front cover of that same magazine.

Yet, for all the hype at the time and the acclaim it garnered, Pray For Villains has become something of a lost gem in the DEVILDRIVER back catalogue. Even though it represents a real high point in the band’s career, no songs have received a live outing since the back end of 2012, which may have something to do with the revolving door of musicians that have been in the band alongside Dez and Mike since the release of fifth record Beast.

In 2024, DEVILDRIVER are a solid representation of the phrase ‘What could have been’, their star seemingly having been on a constant wane since the turn of the 2010’s, but for those who remember their explosion, Pray For Villains will forever be a monolithic piece of work.

Pray For Villains was originally released on July 14th, 2009 via Roadrunner Records.

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