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Canada's Devastator has been going since 1990, well over 20 years, and considering how many bands there are with the same name, this Canadian band is as entitled to use the name as any, I guess.

Fragile Messiah is the title of Devastator's second album and, despite many attempts to label them as either Thrash or Death Metal (or even both), I think categorizing them under one specific musical genre is quite a hard task. There's lots of mid-tempo thrashing and if the gruff vocal parts are meant to put the band in the Death Metal sub-genre, well, that's completely fine with me. Personally, I would not say these Canadians play Death Metal but rather heavy, grooving Metal with bits of Thrash and even some Death Metal in their sound. They have done a pretty good job mixing this together and keeping things interesting. All the heaviness and grooviness they have sucked in give this record a mean vibe. The guys have undoubtedly tried to break out of certain Metal genres and they have succeeded pretty well. This is good grooving Metal from start to finish, there's no denying it.

Without lifting up any particular song above the others, I admire the guys' open-minded attempt to cover Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry." It offers a moment of lightness in the middle of the otherwise dark and oppressive content.

I hope we'll hear more from this promising Canadian Metal act in the future, as Fragile Messiah shows serious potential.