Devil to Pay makes New Music Seminar’s Top 100 Artists on the Verge

http://www.newmusicseminar.com/aov/

The New Music Seminar released their “Top 100 Artists on the Verge” today, and Devil to Pay made the cut. The Top 100 is “the most comprehensive list to date for emerging artists in America.” Criteria for the list include music sales (physical and digital) ticket sales, frequency of gigs, touring history, merchandise sales, media (both online and print), social media activity, online buzz and other factors, as well as “an arsenal of analytics from NMS Partners: BigChampagne, Next Big Sound, ReverbNation and OurStage; music industry experts and tastemakers.”

Read the full press release http://www.newmusicseminar.com/blog/press-releases/new-music-seminar-announces-the-definitive-top-100-artists-on-the-verge-chart/

Review of “Heavily Ever After” up on German metal website

http://www.metalnews.de/?metalid=05&action=show&cdid=5281

(translated from German)

“Thirteen-thousand Horse Power“

Once in a while you discover a record from a band that, though they won’t bring something new to the table or even sweep you off your feet, will keep you in a good mood with the help of other characteristics. Yet, it doesn’t matter, as long as the material provides enormous amounts of heart, soul or similar. Sometimes I catch myself humming or singing a technically boring song for days, just because the song’s got a certain feeling that takes complete hold of me. DEVIL TO PAY belong to my preferred sound these days, though due to maybe “wrong” motives – but I don’t really care about the latter.

With a handful of influences in the vein of grunge and early ORANGE GOBLIN, they won’t work any wonders, but provide you with very entertaining, compulsive songs with a serious Bang. The goal of “Heavily Ever After” is the entertained listener and the record strives for this goal without causing a headache for the audience. Straightness is the main attraction of this record: there’s the main riff, a little down the road you find its variations and right before the end you get the elegant bluesy solo. Within 52 minutes the guys rethink their approach from contribution to contribution, of course – so you get to be astonished by broad bass-intros or instrumentals (“Grimoires”). And yes, considering the stylistic borders, this walks the thin line between good old basics and the recognizable fun these guys have playing together, this is to a bigger part a successful release.

In times of excessive competition and technical finger-dislocation, it’s a pleasure to discover such an unpretentious record like this one from DEVIL TO PAY. Right now, the record can only be ordered from overseas, but considering the weak dollar exchange rate this makes it a pretty cheap treat.