Jack The Joker - The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (Album Review)
Review of the new Jack The Joker album ‘The Devil To Pay In The Backlands’, out now.
by Steve Joyce
The Devil To Pay In The Backlands (coverart)
Jack the Joker – great name! – have recently released their new album, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. It’s their third album since forming in 2012, following 2014’s “In The Rabbit Hole” and 2016’s “Mors Volta”. The reasons for the nine-year interval are unclear, but perhaps like Tool, it simply takes an enormous amount of time to craft their complex, labyrinthine songs, learn how to play them and then record them to the dazzling levels of precision on display here.
From Brazil, the band’s lineup is vocalist Raphael Joer, guitarists Felipe Facó and Lucas Colares, bassist Gustavo Pinheiro and Vicente Ferreira on drums and percussion. Released in August, the album draws inspiration from a renowned 1956 Brazilian novel (by João Guimarães Rosa) and explores the metaphysical backlands, where human will prevails against the hostility of nature. It’s an intriguing concept, and helpfully, the band’s website has some of the lyrics to help you follow along.
The band’s publicity makes much of their music incorporating traditional cultural influences and regional rhythms into their progressive metal sound. Not being a Brazilian musicologist, I’ll take their word for it! It’s certainly a feature of this album that every song here has rhythmic invention, multiple time shifts and a riotous cacophony of percussive power. Drummer Ferreira is clearly a phenomenal talent. His double-kick playing is some of the most ferocious I can remember hearing and the album is almost stolen by the startlingly funky bass playing by Pinheiro.
Although technically impressive, there’s little for the amateur air drummer to get their limbs pumping to and there are moments where the album would benefit from a more straight ahead groove. Note to prog bands everywhere: remember the value of ‘balls and chunk’!
Joer is a talented and versatile vocalist, combining operatics, screams, a meaty low-end roar and on rare occasions, genuine affecting emotion. At times, the singing becomes histrionic which although can make for a challenging listen, it has the virtue of always being interesting – and ‘different’ – a quality I crave and value in any prog album. Guitarists Facó and Colares deliver exhilarating riffage and many memorable solos throughout the album. They’re clearly influenced by big name prog metal guitarists and they have the chops to match. There’s just about the right balance between extravagant overplaying and stylish melodic potency.
This is very obviously a band that resist any restraint on their creativity, so producer Adair Daufembach wisely lets the band cram as many ideas as possible into their music. He adeptly delivers a sonic clarity which enables all band members to shine. The album comprises 11 songs over its 67 minute runtime.
Opening song “Devir” makes immediate impact with fast guitar riffage and broken rhythms, and provides an early opportunity for Pinheiro to show off his funky bass prowess. Joer, too, stamps his authority using various voice styles, before a guitar solo wails over a prog metal breakdown and a thrillingly frenetic outro. Wow!
“Between the Sky Lines” begins in relatively mellow style and there’s good use of atmospheric keyboards to add background dramatic tension. This is a feature of several songs on the album and is a major plus. Some of the drumming on this song is perhaps over-chaotic, but this is emphatically redeemed by a brilliant double kick onslaught in the bridge sections. Joer’s performance gets progressively more unhinged as the song builds. The melodically memorable chorus is a major highlight of the album.
The band shows its capacity for gentleness in “Denied”, with an acoustic guitar intro and some deliciously languid, proggy bass. However, the song’s plaintive verse soon transforms into being angular and nasty and following a tasteful instrumental passage, there’s a stirring outro.
“XV”, at almost nine minutes is the second longest track here, features multiple contrasting movements that flow well, with its climax being an epic guitar solo.
“Neblina” has some gorgeous singing that reminds me of Haken’s Ross Jennings. The song’s intensity builds and there’s another awesome guitar solo, probably my favourite on the album. It would be useful to which of Facó and Colares play the various solos, although I’m sure they’re both equally awesome guitarists.
I love the chorus on “Sun”, which also features a hugely enjoyable Rudess-esque keyboard solo and the song is brimful with melodic hooks. “You (Where I Belong)” is notable for its guest female vocals, which combine well with Joer’s impassioned performance.
“Thousand Witnesses” has my favourite drumming of the album, Ferreira detonating syncopated double-kick riffage and blastbeats with outrageous ease. The instrumental break in this song is almost playful, and it’s another strong, melodic chorus.
“Cabaret”, has a few delicious surprises, from an entertaining use of castanets in its intro to a jaunty accordion in the outro. The song’s highlights are a couple of pulverising heavy breakdowns which definitely puts the metal into the album’s prog metal credentials.
“Saudade” – in Portuguese, a feeling of profound longing, melancholy or nostalgia – has incredibly impassioned singing which conveys this sentiment to astonishing effect. Joer transmutes evident anguish and pain into a viscerally raw performance. It’s utterly captivating and this is my favourite song on the album.
The guitar playing provides the highlights of final song “Hope”, including an affecting, simple guitar melody and some enjoyable, dextrous solos. At thirteen minutes long, a harsher reviewer than me might conclude that the musical muscle is spread a little thin, and I must be honest and say that I didn’t get the pay-off I crave from a prog album closer.
It’s entirely possible that listener’s fatigue is a factor here: as a long album of intricate, dense music, this is a test of endurance! However, at no stage during “The Devil to Pay in the Backlands” is the listener ever at risk of being bored. A jarring dynamic shift is always only a matter of seconds away.
With this release, Jack the Joker enhance their status as an important force in Brazilian heavy music. If you’re hoping to hear anything like Sepultura’s seminal 1996 album “Roots”, you’ll need to look elsewhere. But you will hear a band of precocious talent, a maelstrom of musical mayhem and some truly astounding performances. I would recommend the songs ”Between the Sky Lines”, “Neblina”, “Sun”, and “Saudade” as being genuinely top drawer progressive metal. The album deserves to be heard by the global prog audience and should be a must for prog metal die-hards in 2025.
