Riffology Score: 84/100
Thirteen songs, fifty minutes, and by my count eleven of them are about somebody who wronged Dez Fafara. It's the tightest DevilDriver have sounded in a decade and it does not let up once.
Album Details and Background
Strike and Kill landed on 10 July 2026 through Napalm Records and it is DevilDriver's eleventh studio album. Gabe Mangold produced it with drummer Davier Perez, tracking at Studio Nessa and HaunteDD in California, with Jason Suecof handling drums at Audiohammer. Mangold mixed and mastered it as well, a lot of hats for a man who only joined in 2025 when he replaced Mike Spreitzer. Niclas Mortensen did the sleeve, and that grinning punk hyena on a lime green field is the best DevilDriver cover since Beast.
The rhythm section is the bigger news. Founding bassist Jon Miller is back for the first time since Beast in 2011. Alex Lee and Mangold play guitar, Perez drums, Fafara is the last man standing from the first record. That's a lot of upheaval to walk out of, and it follows the sprawling two-part Dealing With Demons project that took the band from 2020 to 2023. Fafara has been open about the brief he handed the room, telling New Noise he said "write for DevilDriver, write for the logo, write for what people want out of this band which is groove."
Album Facts
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Artist | DevilDriver |
| Album | Strike and Kill |
| Release Date | 10 July 2026 |
| Label | Napalm Records |
| Producer(s) | Gabe Mangold, Davier Perez |
| Studio | Studio Nessa and HaunteDD, California; drums at Audiohammer |
| Genre | Groove metal, melodic death metal |
| Track Count | 13 |
| Total Runtime | 50:53 |
| Lead Single | Dig Your Own Grave |
| Riffology Score | 84/100 |
Album Analysis
Dig Your Own Grave doesn't ease you in. It opens with a kick pattern like somebody emptying a magazine into a filing cabinet, and Fafara's on top of it inside four seconds. Nothing they've put their name to since The Last Kind Words has been this bad-tempered, and the chorus is a playground taunt with a shovel in its hand. As a lead single it tells you exactly what the next forty-six minutes are doing, which on this occasion feels like a courtesy.
Alex Lee and Gabe Mangold spend Dead in the Water throwing lines at each other like early In Flames dropped into a Machine Head arrangement, twinned harmonies over a riff that won't let go of the downbeat. Sanctified in Scars is where they earn the money. The verse pulses in a half-industrial way that had me checking I hadn't skipped into a Fear Factory record by accident, and then the tremolo section turns up with actual cold in it. Fafara sings that these scars are self made, which is the one line on the lyric sheet where he takes any of the blame, though he's back to blaming everyone else by the next track, so I might be reading too much into it.
The title track's the best thing here, mostly because of the drums. Perez keeps landing the verses a fraction earlier than your foot expects, and four minutes of that does something to your balance. Miller's return counts for as much. There is an audible floor under these songs that the last couple of DevilDriver records didn't have, a fat unfussy bass tone sitting where a modern metal mix usually just stacks up another guitar. Whether that's Miller or a decision Mangold made at the desk, I couldn't tell you.
That's worth sitting with, because on paper this is a band held together with string. Spreitzer left in 2025 and Mangold replaced him. Then, rather than easing himself in, he produced the record, mixed it and mastered it, with Perez co-producing from behind the kit and Miller walking back into a bass slot he last occupied in 2011. Dealing With Demons was two albums of a man working through it at length. This is five people in a room with a one-line brief, and the brief was groove. You can hear which of those two approaches suits them better inside thirty seconds.
In the Moonlight is the swerve, and it is the track I'd point a sceptic at first. A woozy, borderline romantic song about a witch, Fafara taking the verses in short breathy phrases with the band standing well back. At track five, wedged between a song about killing somebody and a song about being unkillable, it lands like somebody opening a window in a room nobody had noticed was hot. I liked it more on every pass. I'd still have put it at track nine, though I'm increasingly sure that says more about me than about the sequencing.
I'm not especially worried about Dez Fafara, but he does sound angry about something. Or someone? Knives bloom in friends' hands on Headed for the Fall, treason arrives as a quiet gift, you're a ghost, you dug your own grave, we were never aligned. Thirteen in a row makes it obvious that's the design rather than an accident. This is a record with one setting and no interest in finding a second, and if you want fifty minutes that circles a single feeling and refuses to blink, you have come to exactly the right place. If it's the range of the Dealing With Demons pair you're after, there is less of that here. Two plays in I had the chorus of You're Just a Ghost down as something about toast, which is nobody's fault but mine. Summoning Shadows is the breather and it knows not to outstay itself, nicely textured acoustics gone at two minutes fifty-two, the second-shortest thing on the record.
Shut the Silence On and Oath of Iron are thrash songs with blast beats bolted on, played by five people who sound like they had a good day at work. All Bets Are Off closes on the biggest riff on the album and its meanest sentiment, and those last three tracks are what I keep coming back for. Kerrang! gave it three out of five and called it familiar territory. They're right about the map. I think they are wrong about how hard it hits.
Tracklist
- Dig Your Own Grave
- Dead in the Water
- Sanctified in Scars
- Strike and Kill
- In the Moonlight
- Ride or Die
- Headed for the Fall
- Shut the Silence On
- Never Coming Home
- Summoning Shadows
- You're Just a Ghost
- Oath of Iron
- All Bets Are Off
Tour and Conclusion
The Strike and Kill tour runs across the United States from 14 August in San Diego to 5 September in Anaheim, with Upon A Burning Body and Ov Sulfur in support. It is a west coast, Texas and midwest run rather than a full national sweep. At the time of writing neither the band nor Napalm have confirmed a UK or European leg. The shorter songs here are built for a small room, so somebody ought to sort that out.
Eighty-four, then. This is the most focused DevilDriver album since The Last Kind Words, and it gets there by doing the opposite of Dealing With Demons: no sprawl, no second disc, one idea chased all the way down. The playing is hard to fault, and the mix finally lets you hear the bass. The Lee and Mangold pairing has handed the band a melodic edge they'd been coasting on rather than developing, and Miller underneath all of it makes the record sit lower and land heavier than anything since Beast. If you fell off after Trust No One and never went back, this is the one that brings you back. Start at the title track, run it through Oath of Iron to All Bets Are Off, and if that doesn't get you, nothing this year will. Eleven albums in, a band that got taken apart and rebuilt inside a year has come out sounding like it wanted to be there. I'll take that over a surprise.
Tell me I've been unfair about track five.
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