The 2012 Arsies: January 30, 2012

January 30, 2012

Whenever I play a fighting game like Mortal Kombat, I tend to find a character I really like, figure out a particular button-mashing combo, and just stick with that unthinkingly, slamming my hands into victory. So it goes with DevilDriver, who pretty much repeat their performance from their opening round with equal success.
This time, the victim is Omnium Gatherum's “New World Shadows”, which in its own right is an excellent album. Omnium Gatherum excels at this particular strain of Scandinavian epicness. You can almost taste the fjords! Also, the keyboards on the album are tastefully in harmony with the rest of the metal, not an easy accomplishment. All in all, a virtually faultless piece of melodic death metal.
So it's just a little regrettable to see just how nonchalantly DevilDriver shoots them in the face with “Beast”, a brutal drive-by of an album. By the fourth track, the damage is so thoroughly done that DevilDriver starts to reincorporate some more delicate elements into the mix, which only heightens the carnage that surrounds them. By now, Omnium Gatherum has already gone where Obsidian went before them: beneath “Beast”'s wheels.
Tomorrow, we'll find out which band has the rough luck of challenging DevilDriver next; will it be Amon Amarth or The Human Abstract?