Devil May Care – Divine Tragedy

The worst thing is to be helpless. Devil May Care look deep into various acts of human self-destruction on their new album “Divine Tragedy”. The eleven songs on their third studio record accompany eleven different paths of the destructive, creating a comprehensive work of devastating contemporary history. For this, the band makes use of an impressive range of references and influences: While the structure of the record is based on “Dante’s Inferno” and thus includes literature from the 14th century, the band simultaneously proves how firm they are in their scene. The album’s brute post-hardcore is thus supported by feature parts from scene greats like Pacific, Rising Insane, Venues and Sperling. Fans of Bring Me The Horizon, Architects or Polaris will be blown away by Devil May Care.

Anyone who has even glanced at the daily media from time to time in recent years will be familiar enough with the intermittent unbearability of destructive news. We have known about climate change for decades, but do far too little about it. The number of drug-related deaths in Germany has been rising again for several years. And even in the now long-running Corona crisis, we are hardly coming to an end because we are not learning from our failures. It seems all the more remarkable, in the face of this staggering excess, that Devil May Care have managed to combine all these destructive behaviors, and many more, on a single record. “We tend to make the same mistakes over and over again,” says vocalist Tim Heberlein. “Whether it’s a toxic love that you can’t get away from, or reaching for foreign stars that we reinfest and destroy in the same way we did our home. Everything repeats itself.”

Devil May Care see destruction in this on both a large and small scale. The restlessly quivering song “Outcry”, for example, deals with the destruction of the environment and thus describes one of the most central problems of mankind. The band has already made a strong case for this very topic time and again in the past. Guitarist Lukas Esslinger is an activist with Sea Shepherd and was recently accompanied by the television with the camera, when he was on the Baltic Sea at a mission for porpoises. However, Devil May Care is also characterized by the fact that their descriptions of destruction do not always take on huge political dimensions, but are also dedicated to topics that have a huge personal significance for each of us. The song “Delirium”, in which rapper Johannes “Jojo” Gauch from the post-hardcore through-starters Sperling can be heard as a guest, is thus about physical self-destruction through drug use. The dramatically rearing “Revelation,” in turn, struggles with self-assertion in a human environment that always works against you. “A destroyed self-esteem is at least as deadly as a physical illness,” Heberlein comments on the song’s background.

Devil May Care manage to bundle all the complex and diverse chapters of their record by taking ancient literature as a model. “In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the descent into hell is described,” Heberlein explains of the very unusual inspiration. “The main character goes through nine circles of hell that must be overcome and lived through before ending up in purgatory. Metaphorically, structurally and lyrically, we have transferred this descent into hell to the destruction of humanity. So eleven stages are described, after which a single human life or humanity in its entirety expires.”

Devil May Care do not have to master this journey alone. On “Divine Tragedy” an impressive amount of top-class feature guests can be heard, who add numerous facets to the extremely adept and brute playing of the band. The hit single “Painter”, for example, is a collaboration with metalcore through-starters Rising Insane and has racked up over 250,000 plays on Spotify alone to date. The anthemic “Tragedy” contains a guest part of the Stuttgart band Venues and in the melodic quivering “Dayblind” Like Pacific do the honors.

Devil May Cares third album proves to be an incredibly multifaceted and hard to swallow trip, which you have to digest first. Those who go along with it will be rewarded with one of the most multi-layered and stirring post-hardcore records of the last few years, on which a prominent collective of scene greats has gathered, not without reason. An album that you actually want to run away from – but where it is all the more important for that very reason that we listen very closely.

“Divine Tragedy” will be released on November 05, 2021 via Uncle M Music digitally as well as on CD and LP. The vinyl first edition, limited to 500 copies, will be released in 3 exclusive colors and is available via the band’s own store at www.uncle-m.com/shop.