I envision Hella canvassing stacks of Nintendo Power back issues in mom's attic, eulogizing the primitive lure of 8-bit home gaming. Both guitarist Spencer Seim and drummer Zach Hill openly pledge allegiance to the dusty gray console that reared so many of us-- Seim has even logged time in a Nintendo cover band. It shows. Hella dance a highly technical, relentlessly suffocating two-step of pummeling percussion and breathless guitar, which, for all their torrential fervor, retain the primitive simplicity of a single-minded two-man sonic tag-team. At the very least, The Devil Isn't Red systematically shakes down like it was the rocker's score to upper-level Tetris-- no matter how swiftly the pieces descend, Hella manage to drop them in place.
For most of this record, Hella run a constricted gauntlet of tangled (if slyly unified) instrumental rock songs. Opener "Hello Great Architects of the Future" is akin to witnessing someone's garbled attempt to spit a string of unsorted numbers, where the mind desperately clings to pockets of order despite all attempts to randomly abandon them. Upon first witnessing such pyretic tracks as "Suistyle" and "Top Twenty Notes", you may question the duo's ability to replicate even a single run, given the seemingly off-the-cuff pairings of such polyrhythmic drumming and menacing guitar lines. But the code is pure-- Hella couldn't get no tighter.
The title track, which features some nimble, Heroic Doses-style guitar jamming, and "Welcome to the Jungle Baby, You're Gonna Live", sport the purest rhythms, and as such, sustain longer than any of the album's other tracks once the disc stops spinning. Disparate onslaughts of complex rhythms blend seamlessly together with wrist-breaking punishment. And Hella shreds true even when they go digital: "Brown Medal 2003" sounds like a soup kitchen riot broken up by homeless robots, while "You DJ Parents" draws a straight line to antiquated game tracking. Without such inclusions, the record could play as a single 30-minute track, because for the most part, The Devil Isn't Red is unapologetically linear in scope. This reluctance to deviate from form both solidifies the band's grip and confines its orbit. Hella's technical proficiency is undeniable, but their vision is to be considered. I, too, once considered duct-taping Tetris into my Nintendo. My scores were stellar and my addiction certifiable. But I thought: "What of Contra?"
