DEVILDRIVER'S Strike and Kill Pairs Ambitious Songwriting With Self-Produced Chaos

A genuinely compelling metal record lies buried inside DEVILDRIVER's Strike and Kill, the band's 11th studio album. Songwriting-wise, the record takes ambitious steps forward, featuring a revamped lineup that reunites vocalist Dez Fafara with original bassist Jon Miller alongside new drummer Davier Pérez. Across the album, DEVILDRIVER expands its creative palette, blending groove metal, thrash tempos, eerie blackened atmospheres and jagged melodeath into one of its most adventurous releases in years.

Experiencing those arrangements, however, requires fighting through one of the most distracting mix-and-master jobs in recent heavy music. Rather than working with veteran producers such as Jason Suecof or Mark Lewis, guitarist Gabe Mangold handled the recording, production, mixing and mastering in-house. While that approach offers complete creative control, the finished product suffers from severe mix fatigue, congested low mids and a lack of clarity during the album's heaviest moments.

Individual performances fare much better than the mix surrounding them. The razor-sharp pinch harmonics and lead guitar work on "Sanctified in Scars" slice cleanly through the mix, while Miller's long-awaited return on bass is too often obscured beneath the wall of rhythm guitars. Fafara's vocals also struggle for balance, with his lower-register growls frequently swallowed by the instrumentation before his piercing screams cut back through the mix.

When the songwriting takes center stage, Strike and Kill reminds listeners why DEVILDRIVER remains one of modern groove metal's most dependable acts. "In the Moonlight" is the album's finest composition, pairing a spoken-word introduction and haunting guitar harmonies with a swaggering groove that builds into one of Fafara's strongest vocal performances in years. "Sanctified in Scars" delivers vicious riffing and blistering lead work, while the title track closes with a filthy breakdown built for live mosh pits. Behind the kit, Pérez injects the record with relentless energy, delivering blast beats and precision fills that evoke the intensity of classic Swedish melodeath without sacrificing DEVILDRIVER's trademark groove.

Ultimately, Strike and Kill earns 3 out of 5 stars. The production flaws diminish the studio listening experience, often masking the strength of the performances beneath an overcompressed wall of sound. Yet the songwriting itself remains consistently engaging, suggesting that many of these songs will translate far more effectively to the stage than they do through the speakers. For all its sonic shortcomings, Strike and Kill proves that DEVILDRIVER still has compelling music to write—even if this time, the production prevents those songs from reaching their full potential.