LISTENING TO THE DEVASTATED’S DEVIL’S MESSENGER IS LIKE DELIBERATELY EATING SPOILED CHINESE FOOD

A headache in “musical” form, The Devastated‘s new album, The Devil’s Messenger, is pretty much the worst thing ever. By which I do not mean the worst album ever, because out-terribling every other terrible record is, frankly, a goal far too modest for The Devastated. No, I mean it is actually the worst thing ever to come into existence. Like, the Holocaust happened, but at least we got a bunch of interesting books and movies out of the Holocaust. There will be no books or movies about humanity’s endurance throughout the ordeal that is The Devil’s Messenger.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating for effect — the Holocaust was (probably) worse than The Devil’s Messenger.

But if you told me that you fucked to this album and that that fuck session created a baby and that that baby came out a ree-ree with fins, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

Like, at one point, during the album’s opening food poisoning vomit session, “Drip Drip” — which is far too creepy a title of a death metal song title to have been wasted on this aural anal wart — vocalist Greg Wilburn starts croaking like a frog.

And the croaking pans back and forth between the left and right speaker.

Y’know.

For effect.

And it’s pretty much all downhill from there.

Every song on this album follows the same exact mind-numbing formula, so let me save you the trouble of listening to it and just describe it for you instead. Ready? Here it is:

• Band picks an atonal Korn riff; downtunes to make it even more atonal and Suiside Silence-esque.
• Band plays it over and over and over again.
• Band transitions to a slightly-less atonal, “epic,” Korny Suiside riff.
• Band plays it over and over and over again.
• Singer yells “DROP IT!” or something else to shame his ancestors.
• Everyone listening puts a gun in their mouths and pulls the trigger.
• Said listeners’ loved ones burn the bodies just to make sure the deceased absolutely cannot hear this cancer again.

In all fairness, there is one song, “Caprice,” which is so much better than everything else on this album that it’s downright mediocre. Surely, this Americanized Gothenburg riff is not a The Devastated original; they most certainly must have hired a member of some band that was signed circa 2006 — As Hope Breaks, or Nightime Dies at Daylight, or Fart the Knocker, perhaps — to write it for them.

Diarrhea.

(cocktard out of five horns)

-AR