Deville -
Hail the Black SkyReview by John Pegoraro (StonerRock.com)
Buzzville Records
Release date: June 15, 2009
To be honest, I don't remember much about Deville's last album,
Come Heavy Sleep. A quick look at the review of that 2007 release shows I deemed it pleasantly generic – good for what it was, but easily forgotten amidst its like-minded brethren.
With follow-up
Hail the Black Sky, the Swedish band shows more promise. Sure, there are a couple of instances where the best they can muster up are a handful of nondes c r i p t Queens of the Stone Age riffs, but those are few and far between. The better moments are when this four-piece comes off as a sort of Goatsnake-lite. There's nothing as soul crushingly heavy as “What Love Remains” of course – there is, after all, only one Goatsnake and you'll have an easier time shitting gold eggs than besting that band – but tracks like “Through the Blades,” “Early Grave,” and “Down to Me” have enough swinging heft to make them more than just some assembly line fuzz rockers. It certainly helps that guitarist/vocalist Andreas Bengtsson comes close to mimicking Pete Stahl's distinct croon. That singing s t y l e works well on the moody title track and “My Enemy,” which is more in line with Stahl's other group, Orquesta del Desierto.
If
Come Heavy Sleep hinted at what Deville was capable of,
Hail the Black Sky gives a much stronger, clearer impression. They're still not 100% - again, there's that sense of “been there, heard that” to a couple of songs – but there's enough strong material to warrant recommending them to fans of the genre.
URL: http://deville.nu/
