Devil You Know Featuring Ex-Killswitch Engage Vocalist Howard Jones Signs with Nuclear Blast Entertainment, Streams Demo

I’ve predicted to several friends that Devil You Know, the new band featuring vocalist Howard Jones (ex-Killswitch Engage, Blood Has Been Shed), guitarist Francesco Artusato (All Shall Perish), and drummer John Sankey (Devolved), would sign with Razor & Tie. My reasoning was that Mike Gitter, Killswitch Engage’s former A&R guy at Roadrunner Records (and occasional MetalSucks contributor), now works at Razor & Tie.

Luckily, I didn’t bet any of those friends any money, ’cause I was wrong: the band has signed with Nuclear Blast Entertainment. Which also makes sense: NBE’s Monte Conner was also at Roadrunner before and during KSE’s tenure there, and I’m sure the fact that All Shall Perish are on Nuclear Blast already didn’t hurt any, either.

I’m totally just making an educated guess, though. For all I know, Devil You Know just flipped a coin to decide with which label they’d sign.

ANYWAY, Conner and NBE got off to kind of a rough start last year — they signed Suicide Silence in mid-September, and vocalist Mitch Lucker passed away on November 1… which is just crappy luck. But they’ve been totally killing it lately, signing Soulfly, Machine Head, and ANOTHER highly-anticipated supergroup, Killer Be Killed (a.k.a. Max Cavalera + Greg Puciato + Troy Sanders), to name but a few.

Blabbermouth reports that Devil You Know’s “debut is currently slated for an early 2014 release, with international touring plans and a full touring lineup to be announced shortly.” In the meantime, you can stream a demo of a song called “Shut it Down” on the band’s Facebook page in exchange for a “like.” I dig it! It’s great to hear Jones on something that doesn’t sound exactly like everything he’s done since The End of Heartache, y’know?