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Fresh off announcing their new label home, FULL DEVIL JACKET has wasted no time. The band will release VALLEY OF BONES on March 31, 2015 via eOne Music, their first full length in over a decade. Produced by Justin Rimer (12 Stones), it’s a victorious and impossible to ignore sophomore slab, simultaneously resurrecting and updating the band’s hard rock sound. Longtime fans will recognize plenty of signature elements, but this is the Full Devil Jacket of old on steroids.
When asked what went into the new effort, vocalist Josh Brown offers, “When we write music, we only write it if it’s real. I only sing it if I believe in it. II only write it if I’ve experienced it. When I listen to some rock n’ roll music today, I hear the same important sounding words as the bands I grew up listening to, but I don’t hear any conviction. Everything I write about, I’ve lived.”
Brown’s heroin overdose ended the Full Devil Jacket fans had come to know and love through hit singles like “Where Did You Go?” and “Now You Know” in 2002. FDJ was first discovered by producer Malcolm Springer (Matchbox 20, Collective Soul) then signed to Island/Def Jam under the watchful eye of Tom Zutaut, the A&R legend best known for his work with Motley Crue and signing Guns N’ Roses to Geffen.
Brown returned refreshed, reinvigorated and renewed as singer/songwriter for DAY OF FIRE, touring and playing shows with Sevendust, Papa Roach, Saving Able, Cold, Nonpoint as well as co-writing (and touring) with Daughtry. The band’s debut album was nominated for a Grammy and won Album Of The Year at the GMA Dove Awards in 2005, where the group was also nominated for New Artist Of The Year and Rock Song Of The Year. But after three successful records, Day Of Fire went on indefinite hiatus in 2010.
The gritty sludge of Down is a great reference point for Valley Of Bones, as well as the dark melody of the mighty Alice In Chains and Modern Rock accessibility of Stone Sour. There’s even some old school, throbbing hard rock grit and grime, particularly in songs like “Picturebox Voodoo,” a scathing indictment of the mainstream media and a pop culture that obscures designs toward the apocalypse. Full Devil Jacket is a band that had the world at their fingertips, lost it all, and now rises again.
“If I can share with people my struggle and my mistakes and tell them there is hope,” says Brown, “even when we stumble, we rise again. That’s what it’s all about.”
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