THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA: I STILL DON’T GET IT
Last week I wrote a little bit about how a lot of modern production techniques I loathe may actually be aesthetic choices; and I tried to keep that in mind as I attempted to listen to Dead Throne, the latest offering from The Devil Wears Prada. If, for example, the band didn’t favor such excessive use of autotune and vocoder, would the songs at least be solid?
The answer? Yeah, okay, the band’s sense of structure is certainly stronger than some of their peers. I suppose I understand, on some level, why kids like this stuff. If I had grown up in an environment where vocoder was neither unusual nor considered annoying, and if I had never heard any Swedish bands, like At the Gates or In Flames, or American bands heavily influenced by those Swedish bands, like Darkest Hour, As I Lay Dying, or Killswitch Engage (and it’s worth noting that KsE’s Adam D. produced Dead Throne), maybe this band would appeal to me. In other words, maybe if I wasn’t a cranky old man, The Devil Wears Prada would sound innovative, not irritating.
Unfortunately, though, I am a cranky old man, and all of these songs sounds like rehashes of rehashes to me. And insofar as the production techniques go… I dunno. The only band I’ve ever heard get away with using the vocoder this much was At All Cost, and, again, it’s worth noting that they did it first (their debut full-length, It’s Time to Decide, came out a good year before TDWP’s Dear Love), and it seemed unusual and inventive (and it was so greatly exaggerated that there was never any doubt that Andrew Collins was going for an effect, not trying to convince anyone he had skills which he didn’t actually posses).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bIRKlavIWY
That’s probably why the only song on Dead Throne that doesn’t make me wanna tear my ears off is the instrumental “Kansas” — if you told me it was a long-lost Darkest Hour demo, I might actually believe you.
Dead Throne is now streaming here in advance of its September 13 release on Ferret; check it out for yourself and make up your own mind.
-AR
