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For most bands, going the concept record route can be a tricky proposition. There’s always the potential you’ll get bogged down by that one idea and end up taking the whole thing way too seriously. You risk coming across as trite when you churn out epic full-lengths with a dozen tracks about unicorns and minotaurs. But leave it to a band like crushing American metal six-piece The Devil Wears Prada to take the concept album model and raze it. Leave it to The Devil Wears Prada, voted 2009’s Band of the Year by the readers of Alternative Press, to make concept records bad-ass again.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Hmmm. Didn’t this band put out a totally awesome, critically-acclaimed record last year? Why are they coming back with new stuff already?” Well, yes, The Devil Wears Prada did unleash their third studio masterpiece With Roots Above and Braches Below (Special Edition CD/DVD | Regular Edition | European Release) back on May 5, 2009, and a week later, that very record debuted at #11 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart.

Pardon the pun, but for The Devil Wears Prada, 2009 was one hell of a year. And it was late in 2009 that the band’s frontman Mike Hranica decided, while on a tour of the United Kingdom with post-hardcore luminaries Enter Shikari, that before they’d write and record a new full-length, they’d release a five-song EP. The concept? “The whole thing is just completely based upon zombies,” Hranica explains of Zombie EP, which drops this August through venerable New Jersey metal and hardcore label Ferret Music. “During the fall, I was on a real zombie kick. I just thought, ‘What if we made a zombie song?’ All it took was me just saying that to the band, and we already had our hearts set on doing this EP.”

Ultimately, Zombie EP, the first EP from these 2009 Warped Tour draws, is an extremely heavy record about the living dead, but more specifically, escaping them, surviving the zombie plague, and a man who loses his beloved to the undead and ultimately, spends his days warding off the brain-starved and loneliness. According to Hranica, Zombie EP will hold fans over while The Devil Wears Prada, fresh from tours with Killswitch Engage, All That Remains, and Dark Tranquility, toils away on its next studio LP, which fans can expect sometime in 2011.

“The EP still sounds like The Devil Wears Prada but it’s much more on, and I hate to use the word, but the brutal side. The singing isn’t as prominent as a usual full-length, but when there is singing, it still sounds sinister. I hate to sound so dumb, but it’s just heavy and I think when we came up with the idea, I was thinking about lyrics and what I was going to write about and then, as we went into it more, the challenge for me was coming up with lyrics and keeping it smart. I wasn’t really expecting that when we decided to do an EP about zombies that it would be smart. We just really wanted it not to be cheesy. We just wanted it to be bad-ass.”

Rounded out by guitarist and clean vocalist Jeremy DePoyster, guitarist Chris Rubey, bassist Andy Trick, keyboardist James Baney, and drummer Daniel Williams, The Devil Wears Prada, 2010 Golden Gods Awards performers and nominees in the Best Live Band category, are coming off of what’s been a career year…and there’s no signs things will be slowing for the guys anytime soon. The band, who’ve made the covers of Outburn, HM, AMP, Revolver and Alternative Press and toured with the likes of Underoath, A Day To Remember, Saosin, Silverstein, Chiodos, and Sky Eats Airplane, plan to tour in late summer and during the fall in support of Zombie EP, which Hranica thinks will be “something fun for the fans.” With track titles like “Survivor,” “Outnumbered,” “Escape,” “Revive,” and “Anatomy,” longtime fans will immediately notice their band’s new respect for brevity.

“This is the first recording where we’re doing serious song titles as opposed to the full lengths, which had joke titles” like “Reptar, King of the Ozone” from 2007’s Plagues and “Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over” from 2006’s Dear Love: A Beautiful Discord, Hranica reflected. “Our serious full-lengths have joke titles and our non-serious EP has serious song titles.”

DePoyster maintains the Zombie EP is faster than anything The Devil Wears Prada’s ever come up with before and somehow manages to also include more choruses than any of the band’s previous outings. “It’s going to be sick,” the guitarist, who grew up listening to KoRn and Linkin Park, declares. “It’s us, but it’s more Hatebreed-influenced and just straight-up thrash metal-influenced with some serious Slayer riffs. It gave us something fun to do because it was something we normally wouldn’t do.”

The Devil Wears Prada are a band who’ve experienced something of a mercurial rise since delivering the ferocity on With Roots Above and Braches Below and they feel fortunate for all of the opportunities they’ve been given to bring their music to more fans.

“We’re lucky that we’ve had the success that we’ve had sounding the way we do,” DePoyster notes. “Lots of bands have a very commercial sound and do nothing with it and we sound nothing like what you’d expect would be successful. It’s sick to be able to keep doing that. We’re blessed to have been able to even have the kinds of experiences we’ve been having. I mean, I still can’t believe we were on a Killswitch Engage tour. We’re doing all this stuff and I don’t even know what to think. I’m just trying to chill and not take it in too much or else I’ll freak out.”

The flesh-hungry folly of Zombie EP hobbles into stores this summer and you can catch The Devil Wears Prada’s infamous live show all summer long on the “Back to the Roots Tour,” the band’s first headlining run since their first-ever South American trek in May. That tour kicks off June 18 at the Ichthus Music Festival in Wilmore, KY with dates booked through September 4 in Frenchtown, New Jersey.

 

 

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