
I love that The Devil Wears Prada always make me reasses intial impressions on repeat listens, at least since their early days. Prada have subtly tweaked their sound in ways fans have accepted more than, say, Job For A Cowboy with each release. It’s hard to pin how some bands can be succesful at this with fans while others aren’t as embraced.
I like that TDWP “never sounded quite like this” each time, while still retaining trademark elements, dissonance, screaming, some catchy
hooks for the new school emocore kids and weird textures. The Chariot was another band that managed to evolve really distinctively, whereas while the new JFAC proggier direction yielded some cool results, you’d be hard pressed to peg it as the band you knew even an album ago.
Prada meanwhile have been perfecting their approach with each release since Dead Throne. Their themed Zombie EP is a well loved “aww shit” classic to many of their fans, some of their heaviest yet well developed tunes. I like the idea of themed concept EPs a bit more than stringing a story through many albums ala Coheed, for example. I mean, it’s cool to follow a lengthy intertwined tale as in King Diamond’s Them and Conspiracy albums, but then you have the cases of Geoff Tate from Queensryche calling his post-Queensryche band Operation: Mindcrime or Metallica’s “Unforgiven pt. 15″…and that gets to be painfully desperate, grasping at the last straws of a once glorious concept. Prada have decided to put more substance in their albums both long and short, with consistently superior long players and EPs with short little punch to the gut/head concepts that are easy to participate in with enthusiasm for a bit before moving on to the next material.
Full review BELOW.