You gotta give it to Devildriver: for a band that has reached mainstream listeners the world over, they’ve stayed pretty dedicated to being unholy and occult-oriented. While plenty of the acts like them made a concerted effort to focus on simple, universal themes like bad days and breakups, Dez Fafara has always filled this project with pentagrams, tarot cards, and other references to witchcraft’s darker side. Now, the band have released a new single titled “Wishing,” which, given its timing in the year, feels like a perfect introduction to the Halloween season.
The video definitely suits to the track — “Wishing” sees Dez trying out some clean vocals beneath a distorted warble, as though singing about humanity’s failure from the other side of the veil. But it’s the video’s atmosphere, filled with lanterns, oversized animal masks, and lace-clad ghosts on overcast moors, that really gives this one its power. It’s a refreshing departure from the performance footage so many bands are going with these days, and cements Devildriver as some of the artists doing something different.
Check out “Wishing” below:
“Wishing” comes off of Devildriver’s upcoming new album Dealing With Demons I, which drops October 9th via Napalm Records and is available for preorder.
Discussing the band’s upcoming two albums, Dealing With Demons, Fafara said, “It’s time to lay it all out, on two records. I’m never gonna revisit these subjects again. I’ve been writing about this sort of human nature, disloyalty and dishonesty, love and loss, since the beginning of my career. I am going in a more lyrically woke direction in the future. A lot of people say my music gives them strength. But what they don’t realize is that these topics haunt me. Over the course of these last few years we fled from wildfires, my wife battled cancer and now we are going through a pandemic… so it is what it is… let’s dump it all on the table and purge. I want to go through different topics in the future, so here we are now. I’ve laid it all out on a double record for all of you to hear.”
Check out the full tracklisting and cover art below:
1. Keep Away From Me
2. Vengeance Is Clear
3. Nest Of Vipers
4. Iona
5. Wishing
6. You Give Me A Reason To Drink (feat. Simon Blade Fafara)
7. Witches
8. Dealing With Demons
9. The Damned Don’t Cry
10. Scars Me Forever
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Words by Chris Krovatin
