Deer Blood – Devolution (2015)

Bands these days try to mesh all kinds of genres together and get pretty odd or awesome results. Unluckily for Deer Blood their mixture of Groove and Thrash Metal falls flat to expectations in “Devolution”. Featuring over 13 tracks and 58 minutes of music, this release has some interesting moments that are quickly obscured by an iffy production and a very odd mixture of styles.

Opening with “Bushmaster” we instantly get a weird Groove/Sludge vibe that morphs into Thrash after a few minutes. The raspy vocals are oddly mixed and come out too loud for the rest of the elements to shine. The guitar riffs individually are pretty decent, and in songs like “Born Strong Live Young Die Hard Born Again” and “Trapped Inside” we have some interesting rhythmical sections and a few leads that are very Thrash-tastic, but the groove vibe manages to kill all sense of cohesion and flow.

The sludgy songs like “Means to an End” are quite entertaining and with the Thrashy elements they sound pretty cool, so we would like to see the band stick more in this side of music in the future. Other retro-sounding pieces like “War of the Roses” work wonders in getting the listeners in the Death Angel/Bay Area Thrash mood with incisive riffs and solid drums, too bad this song just gets play weird after the 3-minute mark with some funky bass guitar line and an odd tempo change.

The album’s last four songs are re-mastered version of tracks from their EP “Killing Engine”. These last few tracks have a more old-school Thrash vibe than the regular songs in this release, showing that the band is still experimenting to find their own sound. There some minor Slayer-esque moments in these songs, but nothing too exciting.

In general, we believe that Deer Blood should continue defining their sound and perfecting their craft. There are some redeeming qualities found in “Devolution”, but you need to have enough patience to discover them. If you like Sludgy/Groovy Thrash Metal, this might be an amusing release to check out, but we don’t think that many purists or high demanding Metal heads will enjoy it.

Label: Self-Released

Release: February 16th, 2015

Genre: Thrash Metal

Country: France