Deville, Make it Belong to Us: So it Does
Symmetry, structure and momentum. The tools put to use by Swedish heavy rockers Deville on their fourth full-length, Make it Belong to Us, aren’t exactly unfamiliar, but the record works quickly to live up to its title, offering a rich, coherent sonic personality and cutting a blazing, straightforward path through its 10 tracks/37 minutes. It’s the Malmö four-piece’s first offering through Fuzzorama Records after a vinyl reissue of their 2007 debut, Come Heavy Sleep, on Heavy Psych Sounds, and follows 2013’s Hydra (on Small Stone; review here) and 2010’s Hail the Black Sky (interview here) in being a next logical step in the ongoing development of what’s become a formidable songwriting process and all-charged, riff-led thrust.
Also Deville‘s first full-length since adding guitarist Andreas Wulkan to the lineup of guitarist/vocalist Andreas Bengtsson, bassist Markus Åkesson and drummer Markus Nilsson, who also produced and recorded with Tobias Ekqvist at Sunnanå Studio, Make it Belong to Us is three-tracks deep before it seems to take a breath with the chugging stomper intro to “Mind on Hold,” but really it’s a front-to-back run of hooks and craftsmanship across these songs, and while Deville bask in a mostly sans-frills approach, hooks like those of opener “Make it Belong to Me” and the subsequent rush of “Chief” would make them superfluous additions to such a solid foundation. Very much a successor to Hydra in its sound — Nilsson helmed that recording as well — Make it Belong to Us emphasizes the steady growth of the band’s style and even in a track like “Chief,” which is just under two and a half minutes long and pushes past quickly, they keep a keen eye for melody and a purposefulness to everything they do.
Thoroughly modern in its aural crispness and the fullness of its impact, Make it Belong to Us nonetheless takes on a classic form. Its 37 minutes divide neatly onto two vinyl sides, and the better part of its forward reach comes in the back half, with a closing salvo of four tracks that each offer some marked shift or evolutionary next step. Preceded by affirmations like the Mastodonic stomp of “Mind on Hold” or the beats-its-way-into-your-head chorus of the preceding “Out of the Black,” this later material is even more resonant, but even it holds steady to the core accessibility underlying Deville‘s songwriting. As far out as they go, they only touch four-and-a-half minutes once, on closer “What Remains” (for context, it happened twice on Hydra, one song reaching 6:30), and it’s in the overarching tightness of cuts like “Chief,” “Lever” and “Dying to Feel” that Make it Belong to Us makes its most lasting impressions.
There is a tension at work in the twists of “Lever,” but the melody remains a grounding force, and even when they seem to be their most explosive, Deville are never even close to being out of control, as much as the near-destructive swing in the bridge of “Out of the Black” might work to convince otherwise. “Lever” is also noteworthy for being part of a two-song centerpiece section, both tracks in which have one-word titles — “Lever” and “Drive”; I’m a little surprised they didn’t call it “Revel” — and for its balance of an airier verse with a stomp-into-nod apex that rounds out in an impressively efficient 3:41. All tied together, all neat and flawlessly executed. Beginning with an immediate burst, “Drive” follows suit in its open verse, but hits even harder when it decides the time is right, and though symmetrical to “Lever,” is ultimately even more of a standout.
As the launch point for the aforementioned four-song finishing movement, “Life in Decay” is particularly notable, but it’s more the insistent rhythm and snare punctuation that mark it out as the beginning of a sonic turn, rather than simply a matter of its north-of-four-minutes runtime — though these last four songs work shortest to longest, between 4:12 and 4:30, so purpose and structure abounds even unto the placement. As to where that extra time goes, it’s dedicated to a soaring melodic apex that blindsides the listener and, at least for me, has me wondering why Deville aren’t the Queen of heavy rock. “Dying to Feel” picks up at a verse-chorus run like nothing ever happened and bounces its way through terrain not so far off from earlier pieces like “Out of the Black,” except for a guitar solo that bleeds into an extended, crashing finale that holds its final feedback into the stomp-happy opening of the penultimate “Reflecting Surface.”
Surface can be reflecting, fine, but it’s also thick as hell. Dense riffs are cut through by Bengtsson‘s echoing vocals, and it’s a reminder that when they want to do so, Deville have the ability to conjure serious weight in their riffs. Even here, though, they pull together a memorable hook, and complement it with a righteous nod of an instrumental finish that seems to wink in the direction of Come Heavy Sleep‘s “Rise Above” without directly repeating it. “What Remains” is somewhat brighter, but has a larger groove in its chorus, capping Make it Belong to Us with another of the kind of ultra-catchy stretches that seem to come so naturally to (and from) Deville across their fourth LP’s deceptively brief span. The drums take off at about three-minutes in, but the band quickly turn around and come to a point around a final chorus in “What Remains” and end the record cold with the same level of pretense they affected all the way through: none. That prevailing bluntness of intent lets Make it Belong to Us get right to business at the start of “Make it Belong to Me” and leave its audience wanting more after “What Remains,” so to call it effective seems perhaps like understating it, but what one really takes away from Deville‘s latest is the band’s clearheadedness about what they want their material to do and their ability to bring that to light. No question they’ve grown, and no question they’ve done so in the right direction. They’ve made it belong to them.
