Spader Ess review of "Fate is Your Muse"

Review - Devil To Pay: Fate Is Your Muse [translated from Swedish]
March 7th, 2013

Devil To Pay is not exactly a new band, with their three previous albums and a career that spans over 10 years. But now, with the release of album number four, " Fate Is Your Muse ", this is the first time that they ended up on my radar. And the only thing to say is that it was about time.

The band offers 12 riff-based, raw and heavy rocktunes, with really beautiful and catchy melodies. Besides the heaviness, it is mainly the atmospheric vocals and well-crafted lyrics that prolongs in memory. Steve Janiak might not have what you traditionally call a euphonious voice, but its raspyness, strength and clarity makes it fit into the downtuned riff cavalcade wich the guitars lays down. Bass and drums are heavy and effective, with guitars that adds an effective crunching sound mat. By the way, Did I mention the word riffs, here somewhere? Because you can not emphasize enough that DTP puts the riff into a focus for itself.

Short of some of the songs then:
Third song "Ten Lizardmen & One Pocket Knife" has a sense of Megadeth about it without getting really trashy. The song "Yes Master" lowers the pace a little, but without becoming boring. It is rather a slowing down, to allow us to get on the train before the next song, "This Train will not stop" , which again increases the pace once again. From here on, the locomotive chugs on with good steam, to slow down once again, towards doom territory in the last song "Beyond the Ether". The Lyrics are woven in a nice way around reality and fantasy, a real craftmanship. The lead-heavy music moves in and out of the rock halls. Sometimes it moves towards the doom side of rock, occasionally it breathes more of an traditional 70's rock, with small vocal splashes of grunge. But mostly it's heavy, straight and honest rock in the same district, such as Grand Magus offer. Old school but it still feels pretty fresh. The Sound is stripped down and well produced. No unnecessary hubub is added simply said and that also applies to the guitar solos. There is no unnecessary guitar masturbating, just for the sake of personal brilliance, but more as an effective moodenhancer. The whole composition feels like a good teamwork.

The fact that the band then choose to present the album to the public at a brewery, where they are providing custom designed beer bottles to the event, that obviously hits home with me.So if any are passing Fountain Square Brewing in Indianapolis on the 16th March, bring a couple of bottles to me, because they are obviously on my wishlist.

Finally, the bottom line is that this is a really good album, and the fact that there are already a couple of previous records that I have not listened yet, that's really positive.