by Oliver on June 19, 2023 in Album
„It all goes away/ It all ends in loss/ All will decay/ It all leaves.“, and no light at the end of the tunnel. The pessimistic Everything Worth Loving is as the second full-length player from Elder Devil sort of like their second debut album The Light Dimmed Eternal.
Since 2019, the band structure has long since been completed by the then core duo (guitarist Jacob Lee and singer Stephen Muir) with bassist Ryan Urquidez and drummer Peter Ruacho to form a quartet – and the sound of Elder Devil since then about the EPs Fragments of Hell and Tormentor grown to a level that now also attracts the attention of Prosthetic Records woke up.
With great surprises since the cast-technical evolutionary leap (which is a more organic, freer and less cold-distanced Godflesh influenced sound) probably no longer to be expected for the time being – Elder Devil extend their well-known formula much more to around 32 minutes, have worked out the overarching arc of suspense and the general dynamics more skilfully using small nuances, which is why the constant intensity in an aggressively pissed off maelstrom also puts aside the fact that the variance is absolutely limited: only Insomnia throttles the urgent tempo to a stoically sluggish, doomy cascade that grinds itself emaciated, meanwhile Dismal and Alone as an atonal noise torture chamber ostentatiously throbbing between Khanate, Pharmacon and Full of Hell-Ambient lets you catch your breath.
Everything Worth Loving but above all declines that kind of Grindcore, den Elder Devil have cultivated themselves with their own handwriting despite genetic ingredients – a bit as if all the ascetic and dirty production, which precisely divides the space, all the poisonous, slobbering riffs and blast beats as one Eyehategod-Version of Trap Them im Napalm DeathStroll and dash mode infected with metal splint.
A good part of these impulses, which are shown from the interchangeable masses, is certainly supported by Muir, who is coming to terms with the death of his mother with bared teeth, who, barking and chanting, levels almost every moment of the record with his hissing tirades – and thus occasionally does not leave room for his band, who are acting in the service of the cause , in order to be able to show yourself – but that’s just a bit like not being able to stop weeping the suppurating sore from the wound: that doesn’t do anyone any favors per se, but it’s simply necessary.
So hastened Everything Worth Loving also of uniformity.
The Hounds at Night or After Flesh add more noise and hardcore aspects to the spectrum, My Body Is an Earthen Shrine has something sludgy-epic and New Grief oscillates in a disharmonious mood. The post-metallic What Do You See? rampages over an almost psychedelic guitar figure and manically pursues it before Puncture Wound a particularly nimble galloping carousel game with a surging finale provokes, Burning Forest the tricky symbiosis of rhythm section and guitar so far on display that What Do You Hear? later downright catchy rumbling: a parade single, behind which the closer and title track from the custpunk rock exit to slo-mo meanness no longer has to make any elementary statements, even if this does not lead to a really impressive conclusion to the record.
However, applies – and for Everything Worth Loving actually even more than with every previous release of the now more complete than ever Elder Devil – that you have to be hooked (perhaps even more than by their songwriting itself) on the sound, the attitude and the character of this band in order to appreciate this second debut album (not only with fan glasses) as quite simply a satisfying point landing.
Everything Worth Loving von Elder Devil
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