The follow-up to 2016's reliably punitive
Trust No One,
DevilDriver's eighth studio long-player asks the age-old question: Would
Dwight Yoakam's "Thousand Miles from Nowhere" sound better with blastbeats? That same query is applied to
Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road,"
Willie Nelson's "Whiskey River," and nine other classics of the genre on the competent and occasionally thrilling
Outlaws 'til the End, Vol. 1. It's certainly the group's most adventurous outing to date, but that's not saying a whole lot, as
DevilDriver have been cranking out shelf-stable slabs of death-focused groove-metal for over two decades. Still, it's fun hearing
Dez Fafara and company pay tribute to their outlaw country heroes, especially when they allow themselves a bit of sonic wiggle room, as they do quite effectively on standouts like
Hank Williams III's "Country Heroes" and
Stan Jones' "Ghost Riders in the Sky," the latter of which delivers the perfect blend of brooding fury and power metal cheese. The familiarity of cuts like "Ghost Riders" and "Whiskey River" is tempered by the appearance of less-recognizable offerings like
Richard Thompson's scathing anti-war rocker "Dad's Gonna Kill Me," which gets the full-
DevilDriver treatment, and a guest vocal from
Fear Factory's
Burton C. Bell -- guest spots play a huge role on
Outlaws 'til the End, with
Randy Blythe (
Lamb of God),
Brock Lindow (
36 Crazyfists),
Lee Ving (
Fear),
John Carter Cash, and
Hank Williams III all lending their talents to the festivities. Sure, it can be hard to suss out the source material when everything sounds like it's being filtered through a woodchipper -- it's unlikely that fans will be able to tell the difference between the band's originals and their
Dimmu Borgir-inspired rendering of "Whiskey River" in a live setting -- but there's nothing on here that doesn't feel like a labor of love. ~ James Christopher Monger