Devour the Power

I think the 25% that I gave this album was a combined score for effort and the sympathy I feel for them. I bought this two or three years ago on a whim. It was $4.99, brand new, at a small CD shop. Who could resist a CD for that cheap? What have you got to lose when a CD is only $5? For some reason, this CD has been sitting on my CD rack, unopened, for years. I finally re-discovered it earlier today and decided to finally rip it onto my PC and give it a listen.

The album starts with this wannabe-epic intro that's only a little over a minute long. It's not very good or convincing, but whatever. It's only an intro. Next, we have the first actual song on the album--Hang the Vermin. It starts with a pretty generic, but fairly enjoyable riff with fairly enjoyable drums as well. Then there's the scream. At this point, I'm actually pretty excited for this album. I know it's not going to be anything revolutionary, but the first 35 - 40 seconds have been pretty enjoyable. Then comes the verse... Oh my... This is where my excitement instantly died. The vocals are terrible. The guitar riffs are generic to the point where it's actually painful to listen to, but I decided to give these guys the benefit of the the doubt. I kept listening. I think that was my biggest mistake. There was no improvement to be found. Throughout the entire album, I had this image in my head of 5 or 6 scene kids ripping off every melodeath and power metal riff they've ever heard in an attempt to be accepted as a decent melodeath band. I'll be honest, I'm a fan of some generic metal, but this is just bad. The riffs in every song are seemingly just variations of each other. Everything sounds the same. At one point, I was wondering when the first track was going to end, only to realize that I was actually 4 songs in. It really is THAT repetitive. After about 15 minutes, I just couldn't take anymore. It was literally INFURIATING me to listen to this. I had to stop it.

Take Dragonforce, Children of Bodom and 3 Inches of Blood, water them all down and throw them together and you've got Destroy Destroy Destroy. Every guitar riff is predictable and has been done 4 million times before. The keyboards are equally boring. The vocals are easily the worst part of the album. The only highlights I could find about this album were the first 40 seconds of Hang the Vermin and a the drummer seems to excel compared to everything else. All in all, it's just a bad album. Stay far away.

I chose to give Destroy Destroy Destroy another listen after listening to Battle Sluts, hoping that maybe their previous album offered more when compared to Battle Sluts. I can safely say that it does not offer anything of value when compared to Battle Sluts, or anything at all for that matter. To put it simple, DDD is nothing more than a half-assed Children of Bodom clone. Not even a good one at that (thats a lie, there are no good ones) more like the bad impression of a Children of Bodom clone, like Norther. You can say that DDD is a half-assed Norther clone.

Anyway, Devour the Power is all around weaker when compared to Battle Sluts in every field. Bryan Kemp handles the vocals, and well, he sucks. Plain and simple. He has an obnoxiously high pitched screeching shriek, and doesn’t offer anything else other than some random screams. High pitched screaming ruins albums, or can make anything released from the artist unlistenable (look at Cradle of Filth as an example). All these other Children of Bodom rip-off bands do not rely of obnoxious screaming for their sound, they usually focus on ripping off the annoying keyboard leads. DDD do not focus on all the pointless keyboard interludes or pointless keyboard opens, the exception being the intro. Instead DDD focuses more on (a lack of) melody. If you replaced all the keyboard doodling of Children of Bodom and replaced it all with an overlong, and boring guitar melody you would have a DDD song. If the boring guitar melodies or atrocious vocals do not make you pass this up then maybe the production will. The production on Devour the Power makes the album sound like nothing more than a few stale guitar leads, inaudible bass, over load vocals, and drums that click nonstop.

At the end of the day DDD is nothing more than a weak Children of Bodom clone, and Devour the Power is nothing more than a half-ass album. The second full length Battle Sluts is definitely better, but even that is mediocre. Honestly to hell with this album. If you want to here a better version of Devour the Power just get Battle Sluts, and if you want to here a better Children of Bodom clone just listen of Norther, or better yet just listen to Children of Bodom. Sure Norther and Children of Bodom suck also, but at least Norther don’t suck as much and last time I checked Children of Bodom were not ripping off DDD.

The now famous, or in many minds infamous act Destroy Destroy Destroy are a predictable though enjoyable off-shoot of several sub-categories of extreme and melodic metal. Hybrid styles are pretty common in this day and age, owing to the lack of any one dominant or revolutionary style of metal leading the helm, some of which are a bit more successful in grabbing attention than others. When it comes to this outfit, the combination being dealt with is somewhat akin to something along the lines of Into Eternity, but with keyboards, no progressive or overtly technical additives, and a consistently extreme vocal performance consisting of over-the-top shrieks and growls.

The band is very forthcoming about their principle influences, namely Children Of Bodom, Kalmah, In Flames and Iron Maiden, all of whom manifest themselves in various ways on basically every song. The overall delivery, however, is quite formulaic and almost comes off as a metalcore band attempting to play a hybrid of melodic death, power, and sometimes even thrash metal. The riffs tend to be stationary and repetitive, while the keyboard work tends to push for dominance whenever lead guitar harmonies and fills are not present. The keyboard work is a little more atmospheric than showmanship oriented in the manner of Children Of Bodom, actually close to the manner in which they are employed on Edguy’s earlier albums. Gang choruses and chants are occasionally employed as well, though more in the lighter vain of mid-80s Anthrax rather than the masterfully wicked manner of Necronomicon.

There are a few solid examples of a slightly more thrash oriented answer to Kalmah, as well as others that are otherwise good if a bit flawed. After a nice little Skyfire inspired keyboard intro in “The Summoning”, which mixes slow piano drones with repetitive church organ sounds, things kick off with “Hang The Vermin”. This song basically touches all of the bases in this format with a good sense of timing, mixing styles in and out for dramatic effect. They start out with a fairly epic sounding power metal intro, which leads into a nice Teutonic/melodic death tremolo section, followed by a down-tempo thrash riff breakdown, which finally lands on a chorus that goes between power metal and metalcore. The vocals remain exaggerated throughout, often going beyond standard extreme neurosis into the cartoonish sound of grindcore, but are surprisingly easy to tune out due to all of the keyboard and guitar layers around it.

Though the formula that is introduced here remains fairly constant through most of the better songs on here, the band does vary things by exchanging in and out a few extra stylistic devices, or focusing more on 1 or 2 within this established format. “Gods Of War And Open Sores” drops the thrash and tremolo riffs in favor of more keyboard work and a much more epic sounding atmosphere, complete with melodic backup choirs on occasion. “Battle Cry” ratchets up the thrash a bit more with an impressive intro riff that screams “Show No Mercy” era Slayer, before jumping into a slower melodic section that leans a bit towards Amon Amarth. The only principle weakness in these songs and most of the others that follow a similar format is that the riffs aren’t really developed, their simply replaced with another catchy sounding riff in a different style, leaving a sense of detachment and incompleteness.

Though the band proves apt at emulating many of the sounds found in Kalmah’s better work, these American emulators actually all out miss the mark on here every now and then, occasionally coming up quite short in the riff department or overshooting on the stylistic eclecticism. A few examples of the former problem can be observed on “The Beast That Cannot Be Fed”, which rides the same start/stop riff made popular on Metallica’s “One” way too long and doesn’t have much going on around it to compensate, as well as “Ripped Apart By The Juggernaut” which continually cycles through 3 fairly similar riffs, though the keyboards here do a good bit to compensate. The latter example manifests itself in a halfcocked brutal death/grind mess called “Mutilated Cranial Orifice”, making one wonder what the band was smoking as they tried to put a mediocre, semi-melodic homage to Cannibal Corpse and Cryptopsy in an album mostly set in the opposite end of the death metal paradigm. Likewise, although very enjoyable, the short instrumental “Eternal Voyage Of The Geishmal” essentially throws an Ensiferum styled intro right square in the midst of a sea of non-Folk oriented music that doesn’t really put forth an image of heroism.

Ultimately, inconsistency plagues this album and keeps it from being something that could rival its Finnish and Swedish elders. It isn’t so much a generic release as it is a release that can’t seem to make up its own mind and meanders between various ideas and influences. When it’s on point, there’s some pretty solid and catchy melodic metal with somewhat overdone vocals. But there are a few too many songs on here that either sound too much alike, or that just fall flat while trying to straddle contradictory ideas. Bargain shoppers looking to expand their collection may find 4 or 5 gems on here, but those with an interest in this style of music are encouraged to look to the band’s recent sophomore effort “Battle Sluts” for something that is worth paying full price for.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on February 6, 2009.

One can never truly understand the depths emo/screamo/metalcore...etc kids will go to for the sake of an ironic gimmick. To this end Destroy Destroy Destroy exist as proof of just how far these shmucks will go to get in on the joke. You won’t find a quality and memorable album of old-school power, traditional, or thrash on Devour the Power. You will, however, find approximately forty minutes of numbskulls trying to bolster their hardcore scene points by showing just how hilarious one can be by copping Manowar’s 80s image and playing “tr00 kvlt metal bro!” The music here is forgettable and consists of a poor mix of bland thrash riffs, a few attempts at traditional metal melodies and the usual mish-mash of At The Gates riffs that those wily hardcore kids love to steal. Released on metalcore label Black Market Activities I suppose between releases of the “serious” garbage the label usually puts out such as Ed Gein or From A Second Story Window they must’ve seen the likes of 3 Inches of Blood and Dragonforce doing great with the scene kids and decided to grab a slice of the pie. You might decide from this review that I dislike metalcore and the kids associated with it even moreso and you’d be right. Normally this is never a problem as they have their shows to attend and I have mine. I am able to ignore the torrential glut of bands with names like Bullet for my Valentine, If Hope Dies, Forever I Love Tomorrow when Dying Yesterday…etc with relative ease. It is when the jackasses who sit around adoring this crap decide they also need to start making fun of metal that they need to be called out. Don’t fall for the gimmick, stay far away from this album and don’t give them the satisfaction of any record sales.

Destroy Destroy Destroy must have been doing something right when they started making music. They had a successful debut album, toured with some of the biggest names in metal and even scored a record deal. So what happened? To bluntly put it, they made their second album titled "Devour The Power" and it sucks. "Devour The Power" contains annoying, bland and music that sounds so much alike, you'd think the "repeat" button in your CD player was switched on and is eternally jammed.

The biggest buzzkill on this album is singer Bryan Kemp's awful voice. I've heard bad vocal performances before, but this is one the worst. The mixture of screams and death growls he uses are just horrendous. The high pitched screams of Kemp are extremely annoying and aggravating. The use of this scream is used during a majority of the album and drags it straight to hell. Beside the screams, Kemp has this poor example of a death growl. His growls sound hazy and distorted, almost like he doesn't know how to do them right.

Destroy Destroy Destroy also fail in the musical category, but it isn't as bad as the vocals. The guitar work ranges from thrash riffs to generic melodic death riffing that usually repeat again and again until each song ends. The biggest dud is unfortunately done by the guitars due to the drastic similarities of all the riffs. All the riffs on all the songs are almost identical with each other. I honestly had a hard time remembering which song I was listening to because it all sounds the same. The drumming is the only positive aspect of the album. The drumming seems superior to the rest of the instrumental work when drummer Eric Brown does technical double pedal hits and time changes. His drumming is the only satisfying quality of this lackluster album.

Like I said before, "Devour The Power" isn't very good. These guys do have a decent stage gimmick, but musically speaking, they pretty much suck. Skip it.

This review was orginally written for: http://www.Thrashpit.con