Beatallica in your head! “The Devolver Album,” their first with Metal Assault Records, is a milestone album for them, and by extension, for the objects of their affections.
Here’s a quick Beatallica primer, if you don’t know what they’re all about. Back in 2001 in Milwaukee, four guys decided to start blending Metallica and Beatles songs together.

Not content to just play this gimmick for a few laughs, Beatallica created alter egos for the performers and crafted astonishingly clever, brilliant mashup tunes like “Leper Madonna,” “The Thing That Should Not Let It Be,” “And I’m Evil,” “Blackened in the U.S.S.R.,” etc. The icing on the cake is inger, um, Jaymz Lennfield’s vocal; he does the best James Hetfield impression in the business.
Twenty years into their careers, they’ve released their fourth full-length album, which is an amazing evolution of their style and sound. Where the previous records (and demos) were extremely well-done and expertly-performed, the focus was primarily on the laughs. Those mashups were absolutely hilarious.
“The Devolver” album still brings all of the cleverness and ingenuity of the past, but Beatallica have kicked their own composition skills up a notch, when weaving the disparate elements together. The concept is the same, but there’s less comedy, more straightforward Heavy Beatle music. We’re getting more original material in the combined styles of the source material. They’ve also, inevitably, begun to dig deeper into both band’s catalogues, pulling mashup pieces from deeper cuts. For the first time, there were parts whose sources I couldn’t immediately identify.
For the reasons above, this is almost Beatallica for Advanced listeners. For the uninitiated, I might recommend starting with “Masterful Mystery Tour” or “Sgt. Hetfield’s Motorbreath Pub Band.” But do make sure you come back around to “Devolver.” In spite of the title, this is a fantastic evolution for The brilliance of “Here Comes Revenge,” the “B.C.H.C.” instrumental, “Hesh Today,” “Wherever and Everywhere,” and the best on the album: “The Damning of Helleanor Hippie,” which is a fantastic Metallica-ized riff on “Eleanor Rigby.”