The Devil Wears Prada- Dear Love: A Beautiful Discord
Rise Records 2006
Well, I must say, I really wanted to like The Devil Wears Prada. After my friends all fell in love with the band and raved about them to me, I really wanted to feel what they felt about this. But, sorry guys, I just can’t. I’ve listened to this over and over, and to me its just more generic metalcore drivel. Their name is a really good book and movie though. That’s about all this has going for it.
The Devil Wears Prada are a Christian metalcore band from Dayton, Ohio. They are part of a large(and sadly still growing) “scene” of Christian metal/metalcore bands that includes groups such as August Burns Red, Demon Hunter, and Destroy The Runner. TDWP use the regulation heavy drop-tuned guitars, fast drumming with lots of kick pedal hits, and inaudible bass of just about every metalcore band out there. The lyrics are alright, and I’ll touch on them later. But wait, there is a gimmick in here, they also use keyboards. This must be enough to pull them out of the sea of unoriginality all these bands swim in, right? No, not really. The keyboards, at least to me, are terribly annoying, and don’t add anything to the songs. The vocals are your basic vomiting metalcore screaming, with some nasal singing occasionally. Guitar work is extremely simple, basically pounding the same drop-D or drop-C chord over and over. The booklet that comes with this CD(covered in pictures of skulls and such) mentions a bass player somewhere. Well, if he is there, he is doing absolutely nothing. I cannot hear any bass at all, which of course saddens me greatly. Drums consist of a lot of lightning-fast kick pedal hits and a lot of snare hits. The drums are relatively simple and don’t really change in any of the songs. The aforementioned keyboards transition from atmospheric ambience to simple piano arrangements. Sometimes, when TDWP are feeling real creative, they let the keyboardist play concert piano -esque pieces on top of their breakdowns. The result is just a more annoying breakdown, if that’s possible. So basically, the only thing that could’ve saved this band is just a bunch of superfluous wankery. It’s annoying, and it hurts my head.
The album starts off with “ The Ascent” an intro of keyboard noises. Its annoying, and pointless. The next song, “ Gauntlet of Solitude” begins with fast riffs and fast drumming. The vomiting vocals come in, and do their thing for a little bit. A nifty little keyboard mini-bridge transitions the song into what else but a breakdown. How I hate breakdowns. The rest of the song is basically the same formula, with still more breakdowns and screaming and keyboards. “Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over” is the song after this. I don’t know what the title is supposed to mean, but it sounds very wrong. Anyways, the song starts with a pretty good, yet generic, guitar riff. Then the screaming begins again and surprise! This song sounds exactly like the last one. In fact, there is no need to go on any further. Every song is extremely similar in structure. But for the sake of the review I’ll trudge on. We reach a semblance of a good song in “ Swords, Dragons, and Diet Coke.” Another dumb song title, but the song is enjoyable. There is a lot of fast drumming in this song, which is always fun. In the middle, the vocals transition from screaming and growling to nasal singing, which is a relief. The guitars do some nifty(sarcasm) pinch harmonics and then go into yet another breakdown. “Who Speaks Spanish, Colon Quesadilla?” is almost laughable with its “dramatic” spoken word bit in the middle. The guitars and drums do the same thing in this song as always, and the vocalist talks into the microphone, saying something I can’t really make out. The lyrics, as I mentioned before, when compared to the rest of this suckage, are not bad. To me, they speak of bettering oneself and other Christian virtues. Or something, I may be wrong. But alas, these lyrics aren’t enough to save The Devil Wears Prada.
Listening to this reminds me of the generic label food they sell at Wal-Mart. It always has some dumb name, like “Diet Dr. Thunder” for Diet Dr. Pepper or “Cheese Whales“ for Goldfish Snacks. It’s never better than the original, just cheaper. You may laugh, but The Devil Wears Prada is a lot like that food. They look bad. They taste bad. They certainly are hard to swallow and they leave you feeling slightly nauseated and wishing you had bought the original, which probably wouldn’t have made you sick. Don’t listen to this band. They are the definition of generic, and are made worse by the fact that they tried not to be generic. Besides, who wants to eat nasty food and/or listen to bad music? No one wants that, and that’s the truth.
+Pros+
Gave me an excuse to make a lame generic label food reference.
Lyrics are tolerable
Makes you, or at least me, want to go see the movie again.
+Cons+
Nothing is really different or innovative about this band.
Combination of keyboards and breakdowns gave me a massive headache.
Reminds me of generic label food.
1/5
