Good? Sure. Great? Not so much. This Christian metalcore band has a ways to go, and we’re paying attention. Photo from .
The was a gathering place on Tuesday for a new generation of the hardcore kids you knew in high school (yes, they still exist.) Everyone seemed to be 14 years old and a walking billboard for dozens of tattoos they’ll regret by approximately age 16. Countless heads of flat-ironed, kitchen-scissor haircuts were instantly humidified and ruined inside the stifling venue.
The best part of all the strutting and preening was the silent who-has-tighter-jeans contest going on between the guys and girls. I realized that I’d walked into a showcase of THE show of the season for those into Christian metalcore. And everyone, from the band’s snooty merch guy to the mom sitting at a table waiting for her kids, seemed to know that this was as much a scene-kid popularity contest as it was a concert.
After three opening acts, I’d stopped waiting to figure out what the big deal was. I was ready to chalk up the gathering to some sort of mistake, or as obvious proof that some exalt a genre of music that I will never care for. But as if on cue, opened with their first song and shut me up, hard.
All the components that made the experience enjoyable hit me in that first song. The savage, bulldozing guitar held a power that many metalcore bands try to imitate but never quite duplicate. Although, halfway through the set I was silently arguing with the idea of the band being adamantly labeled “metalcore.” The combination of the synthy, at-times keyboard stylings and the vocal gymnastics of guitarist/”clean” vocalist Jeremy Depoyster were more an ode to hard pop-punk than metal.
The metallic riffs were too pale to greatly counter this vibe. Screamer/lead vocalist Mike Hranica helped concretize the sense of “core,” but as with most bands in this genre, you’re lying if you can say the deep growls and shrieks are distinguishable from one “blank”-core band to the next. Wrapping it up nicely was the rapid bass tone in the drums that kept every head fluid with steady head-banging.
At times, I found myself correctly guessing the note progressions to songs I was unfamiliar with while stifling a yawn. Yet every time I was ready to write off a song as repetitive, a solo was incorporated or a surprise vocal harmony threw them back on track. They even pulled out their slightly comical yet brutal cover of the Big Tymers’ hit “Still Fly.”
While the set sufficiently quelled the pretentious air I’d gathered, it fell short of spectacular. The band has undeniable talent, enough to give me the impression that they can (and will) do better. The crux of the Devil Wears Prada is that they are idolized in a specific genre, but it’s a genre that many will always consider a joke. The only way to redeem themselves is by bringing on talent that will speak for itself. Will some get over the abrasive image they produce and open their ears to what the music is saying? Well, they’ve got me listening.
Lauren Chavarria is a Denver-based writer and a regular contributor to Reverb. She attends school at CU Denver, where she spends most of her class time updating her Twitter (http://twitter.com/LaurenChavarria).
