Aussie bruisers The Devil Rides Out touch on a lot of familiar stoner rock elements without ever completely giving themselves over to them. The Perth four-piece follow a trio of EPs with The Heart and the Crown, their full-length debut, on Impedance Records (MVD distro in the US), and at 53 minutes, the album manages to reference the well-trod paths of fuzz and still wind up neither redundant nor completely cliché. A big part of the credit for that has to go to vocalist Joey K, whose gruff (still clean) delivery separates The Devil Rides Out from their heavier influences. The overall affect is that The Heart and the Crown has parts that will unquestionably remind the experienced listener of other bands, but enough personality in both the music and the singing to still come out of it with a sound of their own.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think much of The Heart and the Crown my first couple listens through. Even for the novelty of it being Australian and the band’s being part of the growing scene there, I couldn’t get past my initial impression that it was generic and even K’s vocals weren’t enough to set it apart from the scores of other throaty heavy rock bands out there. However, in further and further sessions, The Devil Rides Out – who take their name from a 1967 Hammer Horror film that starred, of course, Christopher Lee – make subtle tonal changes that reveal themselves more over time through the clean, crisp production. Andrew Ewing’s guitar pulls out über-fuzz on “Right Lane Man” (compare the opening riff to The Atomic Bitchwax’s cover of Core’s “Kiss the Sun” from 2005’s Boxriff), and “Gentlemen Prefer Bombs” moves from a Giraffes-style groove (thinking of “Honest Man” from 2008’s Prime Motivator) into driving, straight-ahead heaviness, but middle-cut “Phosphorous” has a slower, doomier feel, and late-album curveball “I Keep Secrets” – despite having the guitar too loud in the mix during the intro/choruses – shows a deft approach to Queens of the Stone Age’s six-string bounce. But even there, he’s not restrained by the fuzz or only bringing that to the table sonically. Bassist Brendan Ewing – since replaced by Scott Paterson – leads the way into that song and into a slower, more melancholy break on the title-track, not so disparate from what Brant Bjork did with “Somewhere Some Woman” on last year’s Gods and Goddesses.

Structurally, the The Heart and the Crown relies on well-composed and positioned verses and choruses, coming off catchy but not overly simple. The varied-but-still-definitely-stoner sound carries over in the drums of Royce Uyen, whose steady snare hits propel opener “Watch it Burn” with a grown-up-punk mentality. The Clutch-esque slide guitar on “Hard Love” is complemented excellently by K’s singing, and the slight lyrical shifts in the chorus speaks to a depth in the songwriting that serves The Devil Rides Out well throughout the rest of the album. Standouts like “Gentlemen Prefer Bombs” – not the most agreeable lyrical sensibility, but a memorable song nonetheless – “Hard Love,” “The Heart and the Crown” and the later, anthemic “Ain’t No Music in the Money” (the last being my pick of the bunch) anchor tracks like “Mean Season” and “Broken White Line,” which are less nuanced, despite backing vocals from the Ewings, and the vitriolic “The New Idle” doesn’t have to, but could easily rest on the anger in its lyrics alone to distinguish it among the tracklist. K lists and lambastes generations both efficiently and effectively, without sounding bitter or out of date, leaving little to be argued with.

If The Devil Rides Out have it in them to reshape modern stoner rock, The Heart and the Crown isn’t going to be the album that does it, but there is enough here to make it worth giving it the time to sink in. Like old blocks rearranged into a new building, “The Heart and the Crown,” “Ain’t No Music in the Money” and the bluesy closer “Lost Town” show an edge of individuality most bands never attain within a genre, and this being The Devil Rides Out’s first long-player, I’m more than willing to give a little ground on the sonic references they’re making. In this era of commitment-free online listening, The Heart and the Crown is easily viable checking-out fodder for its subtle flourishes and for the potential it represents on the part of the band.

The Devil Rides Out’s website

Impedance Records

Tags: Australia, Impedance Records, Perth, The Devil Rides Out, Western Australia

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.