“We’re not a metalcore band trying not to be a metalcore band,” said The Devil Wears Prada’s Mike Hranica about their 2022 album Color Decay. More than most of his ilk who rely on outlandish pull-quotes to survive, the sentiment is believable. Even as they’ve slid away from 2011’s career peak Dead Throne, there’s always been the impression that The Devil Wears Prada know what metalcore should be. At the very least, they know what form of it is best for them at any given moment. It’s actually produced some solid variety from them, and even if they’ve never reclaimed their heavy zenith since, creative health has kept up.
Or it had, anyway. For an album whose title is as evocative of life and growth as Flowers, it sees The Devil Wears Prada’s music at its least fertile. Gone is any allusion to serious, slamming metalcore that completely redefined their old Myspace days, and in its place lie the table scraps of Bring Me The Horizon’s cyber-pop, or an own-brand take on Dayseeker or Bad Omens. In other words, The Devil Wears Prada have dispensed with anything definitive of themselves to willingly slink back into the pack, and even then, not do a very good job of it. As has become so tiringly commonplace among their kind, it’s what they look like when they are trying not to be a metalcore band.
The issues with Flowers run deeper than “it’s just not very heavy”, but that’s a good place to start. Songs like The Silence and Wave are borderline antithetical to what The Devil Wears Prada are about—the former is an electro-pop-rock cut juiced up by ‘80s synths and gated drums; the latter is barren, barebones alt-balladry at its most cloying. When metalcore is brought into the equation, it’s in the pop-metal-friendly Where The Flowers Never Grow, or cuts like Eyes and Cure Me that treat formulaic, shallow flavourlessness as the standard. The outlier is All Out that strives to be much heavier, but as tends to be the case when the tempo is so deliberately cranked up as a ploy for contrast in as polished a package as this, it’s mostly a perfunctory bone thrown. Honestly, it’s most like one of I Prevail’s stabs at ‘heaviness’, where it only reaches that line in the shuttered context of its own album.
All Out is also the place where you’ll get the more airtime from Hranica on Flowers, who’s effectively been reduced to a bit-player on his own album. Now, the lion’s share of frontman duties goes to Jeremy DePoyster’s clean singing, thus leaving Hranica as a bit of spare part. For what’s required of him, DePoyster isn’t bad—he fits with Flowers’ M.O. of being a big, empty chorus machine, if you want a truly backhanded compliment—but in doing so, you’re never not able to notice how marginalised and awkward Hranica’s presence is. A song like The Silence doesn’t need screams, leaving Hranica as a glorified backing singer; similarly on The Wave, he’s mixed to sound as utterly tiny and insignificant as possible, lest the entire thing shatter under the barest pressure. Maybe it’s actually a blessing, though, as when Hranica takes the lead-up to When You’re Gone’s big, climactic scream, he fluctuates between sounding in pain and in need of a laxative.
It should go without saying that rarely is this satisfying to listen to. Most of that is a consequence of—big shock!—how ruthlessly The Devil Wears Prada have taken to flushing themselves of any weight. Stylistic mandate requires a weak, underfed listen, helmed by its colourless production and leaving any significant meat and musculature to be cast off. A song like When You’re Gone wants to be heavy and low-slung in its guitars, but it being absent of all suitable fire is the consequence of a re-up as drastic and ill-advised as this. It’s hard to imagine any The Devil Wears Prada fans wanting something like Flowers, regardless of musical open-mindedness. It’s not just a world away from being ‘experimental’; it’s embodying tropes and stereotypes that this band have incalculably exceeded in the past. Was anyone actually craving a song like For You, a hackneyed emo wetwipe that dials in overly-sentimental set pieces like “I would take a bullet for you, stare death right in the soul” as if they actually had meaning? Cycle through every leached production job and toneless breakdown, and The Devil Wears Prada’s disregard for what they’re actually good at—and have been for two decades now—almost feels insulting.
It’s actually on the final track My Paradise where we get some illuminating self-awareness, as DePoyster sings “Maybe this mediocrity is my paradise”. Perhaps it’s just more par-for-the-course prostration that fits this album so snugly; perhaps it’s The Devil Wears Prada showing their hand to admit that boring, nondescript swill like this isn’t fulfilling, but it’s easy and lucrative. It’d be disappointing if it were the latter, coming from a band who’ve long been held as ‘one of the good ones’ in metalcore. Tell that to a newcomer after showing them Flowers, though, and they wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face. It’s comfortably The Devil Wears Prada’s worst album, with a gutted-for-parts approach that flatters and satisfies no one. Again, under no circumstances is this what they should be, and even if recent works like Color Decay or The Act weren’t masterpieces, they were more than this. Flowers, by comparison, is a complete and utter wash.
For fans of: I Prevail, Dayseeker, We Came As Romans
Words by Luke Nuttall
‘Flowers’ by The Devil Wears Prada is released on 14th November on Solid State Records.
