Speak of the Devil

The deathcore scene seems to be evolving into something more more progressive. Some call it Sumeriancore, named after the label who signs these progressive metalcore/deathcore artists such as The Faceless, Born of Osiris, and Veil of Maya, among others. I’m taking a liking to the term Progcore, myself. Whatever you want to call it, its presence is growing. Young, talented musicians are trying something different and it’s sounding good.

Speak of the Devil are one of these bands. On the musical spectrum, it would seem that their closest relatives seem to be Born of Osiris and Between the Buried and Me. Speak Of The Devil have this hard/soft duality that this type of progressive music has. The heavy sections feature powerful aggressive screaming and crushing riffs that are cut up with synth melodies and guitar lines. When SOTD thinks the listener has had enough, they take a step back for a second to treat us with some spacey atmosphere and clean singing, found in tracks “Monkey See, Monkey Doomsday” and “Formaldehyde and Seek.” There’s also the very slight tendency to go into a proggy and experimental game of wank every now and then, but nothing as far out there as BTBAM. With Speak of the Devil, there’s a considerable amount of progressive flux, but they don’t stray too far from the course.

The band has a penchant for naming their songs with clever puns and portmanteaux, a la Norma Jean. To me, this is pretty cheesy and gives off the impression that they don’t take themselves too seriously, which is kind of bittersweet. And upon further inspection, one of the members has the role of “lighting/lifecoach.” My first thought I found this pretty confusing, but I saw this high quality video of pro-shot footage.

Eh, I’ll just give it to him. The light show is pretty impressive. But I’ll just assume that by “lifecoach,” they mean “the guy who supplies the weed.”

All joking aside, the music is damn good. The heavy parts are satisfying, the proggy parts are enthralling, and the clean parts are kinda soothing. I highly recommend giving SOTD a listen if you’re a fan of any of the bands I name dropped above. And how can you afford not to? The music is free. - heavyblogisheavy.com

I'll start off with some noteworthy local openers. Although all of them put on good performances, a few caught my attention musically. Scarborough's Speak of the Devil definitely were my favorite, if not for their refreshing take on progressive metalcore (in the vein of bands like Between the Buried and Me, Protest The Hero), then definitely for the eye-catching and colorful light show they had during their set. On top of that, they had a great stage presence and got the crowd to move around alot.

http://www.themetalreporter.net/2009/02/show-review-crush-em-all-tour.html - The Metal reporter