Metal Underground.com

I was completely expecting myself to hate the new The Devil Wears Prada album, but it looks like the band has accepted some constructive criticism regarding their most notable flaws. “Dead Throne” still has a dated sound, but it's nowhere near as annoying as the band's previous work, primarily since the band has actually managed to grow up. After three albums of juvenile song titles and an EP describing a zombie apocalypse, while embracing every metalcore cliché in existence, it's about time that The Devil Wears Prada began to take themselves seriously and lose the childish immaturity that characterized the band in the past.

Two changes that I liked are the band branching out with varied song structures and losing the abuse of auto-tuned clean vocals. Not that the latter aren't still present, but the band's most annoying feature is now only used when appropriate, instead of consistently. The fact that the lyrics also follow a strong theme of opposition to heroes and idols just adds more to the band's new maturity, as they're no longer based on silliness and outdated pop-culture references.

The genre is still metalcore, but “Dead Throne” is a good example of how to do metalcore right. That alone is my biggest gripe with “Dead Throne.” I've heard all that this album has to offer before. Simple old metalcore can't cut it in 2011 and bands have to evolve in order to stay relevant. Even a cameo by Tim Lambesis can't seem to make me overlook an album that sounds like it came out in 2005. Metalcore isn’t old enough to be retro, so there is no revival going on. This is an irrelevant sound by a newer act that's inspired by many of the groups that could get away with sounding like “Dead Throne” does.

Problems with relevance aside, The Devil Wears Prada are on the right track to creating something great and “Dead Throne” is a good start. There are enough quality riffs on here to make a purchase worth it for diehard -core fans, but “Dead Throne” doesn’t offer me anything that I didn’t already hear on last year's All That Remains album.