The Last Kind Words (CD - 2007)

Additional personnel: Dominic Camardella (Hammond b-3 organ); Simon Blade Fafara (background vocals).

For their third full-length, DevilDriver storms ahead with their compound of old-school thrash, death, and groove metal stylings. Vocalist Dez Yet Farfara and company offer up a fair share of melodic playing and hooky riffs without sacrificing the band's trademark aggression and ferocity. THE LAST KIND WORDS gets a polished, tonal facelift compared to earlier albums, thanks to Trivium/Bury Your Dead producer Jason Suecof.

When DevilDriver first started out, some assumed the band was merely a side project for everyone's favorite facially tattooed frontman, Coal Chamber's Dez Fafara. But by the group's third release, 2007's The Last Kind Words, it appeared as though Fafara has completely put the nu-metal shtick of his former band behind him -- the group is a 100 percent metallic beast that has more in common with thrash/extreme metal than all those unbearable "eyeliner metal bands." The group is just as heavy and brutal as the average band you'd spot while scanning Headbanger's Ball, as evidenced by such toe-tapping ditties as "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" and "Bound by the Moon." But therein lies the problem (the same exact dilemma that befalls many a modern metal band of the early 21st century) -- there's not anything all that much different going on here when compared to all the other acts from the current metal crop. Nothing fancy -- just an extreme metal roar that hits you right between the eyes, which may have been DevilDriver's goal all along. ~ Greg Prato minimize