THE DEVIL RIDES OUT

THE HEART & THE CROWN

The Devil Rides Out have paid their dues in time honoured fashion, playing every shitty venue around Perth on the far west coast of Australia for the past few years and releasing 3 exciting EP’s (“Volume 1” to “…3”) along the way, but none of them did more than hint at the depth and ambition contained on this, their debut full length.

The Devil Rides Out signature sound owes much to fuzzboxed desert rock, informed perhaps by the hot dry winds blowing across Australia’s arid Nullabor and into Perth throughout our long, hot summers. The Devil’s sound is similarly dry and austere, yet somehow it has a hypnotic effect, drawing the listener into it’s unyielding but welcoming thrall like a cobra turning it’s prey into willing victims.

If that all sounds a little full on, you should be warned: this is no “feel good” party rock album, though it does feel good. Am I making any sense? This music has me in it’s thrall – intense and uncompromising, individual and revelatory – The Devil has grown up and is taking on the world on it’s own terms.

If it's a reference point you want, think of a belligerant Henry Rollins/Tex Perkins hybrid, venting out front of an Australian rock flavoured Kyuss on a cocktail of stomach-pump-inducing severity.

While the songs themselves writhe like snakes atop a fiery medusa: ‘Hard Love’ is a biker road movie put to music, ‘Phosphorous’ is hypnotic, ‘The New Idle’ is cantankerous punk fury.

Joey K’s lyrics are uniformly coruscating and seductive, full of vitriol and power and wit. ‘Gentlemen Prefer Bombs’, ‘Ain’t No Music In The Money’ and ‘I Keep Secrets’ are undisputed highlights with clever lyrics and attitude to burn up the rock highway.

The guys are touring Australia as I write this – if they come to your town, you’d be stupid to miss the opportunity to let them bulldoze your eardrums. Monstrous!

Shane Rockpit