Review Summary: Devil Sold His Soul retain a firm grasp on reality and its darkness while never losing sight of the light at the end of the tunnel and the hope that holds us together. And then they make music out of it.
The modern era is completely full of music that unsuccessfully tries to convey emotion. To be fair, many musicians make a valiant effort to put real feeling into their art, but by and large they fail miserably, whether it be an unconvincingly cheesy semblance of joy or a cliched, overused mockery of depression.
Devil Sold His Soul are another band that attempts to cram a huge amount of emotion into their music, and they certainly finger the line between realistic human sensation and an embarrassingly stupid attempt at putting meaning into their music. But the difference between them and so many other groups is that they simply finger the line: they never cross it, and this ability to put realistic, tangible feeling into their art makes for some of the most hauntingly beautiful heavy music within recent memory.
Devil Sold His Soul aren't your typical heavy band. In all truthfulness, they are difficult to tag with a single genre, as most existing genres seem inadequate, always leaving out some important facet of their sound (fellow Britons
Rinoa have some similar qualities). Their music has the loud-quiet dynamics of post-rock, the massive climaxes of post-metal, the cleanly sung sections of post-hardcore, and even has a few darker, "chuggy" parts that are somewhat reminiscent of metalcore. The vocals alternate between a coarse, emotional harsh method somewhere between a yell and a shriek and a high, soaring clean vocal.
Drowning/Sinking is an especially strong song in the vocal department, displaying intense, chaotic sections of harsh vocals, beautiful crescendos of cleans, and even a unique choral section that dominates the final part of the song (which happens to be one of the album's most catchy moments).
An Ocean of Lights, which is probably the album's most beautiful and uplifting track, is notable in how it features the two primary vocal styles being used at once to great effect, and heavier tracks such as
The Disappointment consist almost entirely of the screams.
A complaint that some listeners may have is how many of the songs seem to follow a very similar structure: typically beginning with a heavy, chaotic section and ending with a climax of dense, emotional power chords and clean vocals. This is certainly a valid complaint, but the more one listens to the album, the more one is capable of picking out all the subtle variations within each song. The first few minutes of
Frozen are dominated by a subdued, post-rocky part that is highly reminiscent of
Red Sparowes, and heavier cuts such as the previously mentioned
The Disappointment and
The Weight of Faith replace most of the typical melodic sections with heavy, catchy riffage and, especially in the former, a more prominent bass guitar.
A Foreboding Sky, the album's obligatory "epic" track, shows strong post-metal influences in its interplay between dark, sludgy sections and atmospheric post-rock-esque sections.
But, while the album has things going for it with the technicalities in the music itself, these are not the factors that make it a truly exceptional record. The vocals are good, but not stellar, and the instrumentalists, while displaying a respectable amount of technical prowess, never do anything truly jaw-dropping. What makes this album transcend the dark, unmemorable realms of "above-average" into the outstanding is in, as mentioned before, the pure emotion and power that the band puts into their music.
Devil Sold His Soul don't try and put false happiness or unconvincing depression into their music. The album displays both positivity and darkness in both its sound and its lyrics (which are, by the way, outstanding), but it's not really "happy" or "depressing." They steer clear of these potentially shallow emotions and instead inject the single most tangible human emotion into their music: hope.
There is no falseness, and there is no pretentiousness: there is only the emotion that drives us to live, prosper, and persevere. Their music is dark, but in every song there is a visible light at the end of the tunnel, reminding us that no matter how dark the world seems there is always hope. It's not joyful, as existence is often devoid of true joy and the emotion on this album is realistic. But it is uplifting. The sections of chaos and intensity speak to the reality of a world full of despair, but then the breathtaking, soaring periods of melody swoop down and lift our spirits, forcing us to recall the ultimate triumph of good over evil; light over darkness.
Devil Sold His Soul have created the musical incarnation of hope, and it is truly a beautiful thing to behold.
Album Highlights
Drowning/Sinking
An Ocean of Lights
Frozen
The Disappointment
