Either that Christian Metalcore bands are in quite high demand lately or it is just pure coincidence that the last few promos that I received belonged to outfits that serve this specific genre. The latest offering that I had to review was from the interestingly-named Ohio-based sextet The Devil Wears Prada - a relatively young outfit whose music I had never come across before, seeing as their debut album "Dear Love: A Beautiful Discord" was only released a year ago. Well, when it comes to reviewing metalcore bands you should expect nothing less than aggressive guitar riffs and equally demanding vocals and with that in mind I prepared myself for a real challenge.

Having recently reviewed the latest effort of this outfit's label mates Blessthefall, I thought I knew what to expect from the ten-track release "Plagues", but it really took a simple spin in my CD player to realise that The Devil Wears Prada are a slightly different 'monster'. The most characteristic elements of the sextet's music are the atmospheric keyboard melodies, which often sound to me like a lighter ecclesiastic organ, the complexity of the rhythmical structure of their compositions and finally the weird choice of song titles, the most characteristic of which would be "Hey John, What's Your Name Again?". All this sounds quite interesting, but what is the overall feeling that such a release can convey?

Well, the only word that I can really think of in order to describe the majority of the compositions is...confusion! Don't get me wrong - I love technically challenging songs and variety is indeed the 'spice of life' as far as I'm concerned, yet much as I tried to get connected with these ten compositions, I never really managed to achieve this.

I often found myself lost in an array of difficult-to digest changes, out of place screamo vocals and typically-sounding metalcore breaks all of which challenged and successfully undermined the unity of these compositions. Songs like "This Song Is Called" and "The Scorpion Deathlock" kick off with the best of intentions, trusting in the simplicity of their structure, yet half way through their duration they manage to sound as complicated and tiring as songs like "Don't Dink And Drance" and "Reptar, King Of The Ozone". That meant that the only couple of compositions that I did manage to enjoy were "Number Three, Never Forget" and "You Can't Spell Crap Without "C" - both of which are simply structured composition that combine typical metalcore riffs with some really impressive keyboard melodies and a mixture of clean and intense screamo vocals.

Even though I cannot say that I am particularly fond of "Plagues" as a release, I am happy to have listened to it because it brought me in contact with a young band in search of their musical identity. I really hope that I will listen to more music from this sextet in the years to come and maybe even live to regret having given them a relatively low score. Keep on trying, lads.

**½

Review by John Stefanis