When I first listened to the sophomore album The King is Fat ‘n’ Old by Italian metal group Destrage, I was a little unsure of just what to classify them as. My initial impression from their opening track “Double Yeah” made me actually think that they were just going to be another hardcore band due to vocalist Paolo Colavolpe’s shrieks. However, as I delved deeper into not only the rest of that song but the rest of the album in its entirety, I could see that these guys really seem to try and mix anything and everything to do with metal into their music — even more so than their first album, which was a little more straight up melodic death metal. The band simply isn’t afraid of any musical style, whether it be hardcore, speedcore, groove metal, thrash, melodic death metal or even flamenco (!?!!)

Yes you read right! Even though stretching their borders to such a style of music is nothing new to Destrage—given that it was incorporated into their first album Urban Being—the intro to the second track “Twice the Price” begins with the Spanish style of acoustics for about ten seconds before kicking into the brutal rhythm that sets the songs pace. You also get to experience Colavolpe’s impressively low screams compared to what he’s already shown vocally and even brings in his cleaner tones that’s at some points again accompanied by some more acoustics which at this point seems placed merely to give the listener a breather from the different elements added into the track.

Next on the album comes “Jade’sPlace” which is more or less defined as the ‘cock-rock’ jam. This is definitely a song that certainly resonates the age of hair-metal and glam-rock yet definitely stands out to once again serve their versatility as a group. Now for those who may have thought about ceasing to read much further, I wouldn’t put too much merit into this song in particular mainly because if one were to take a closer look at the lyrics, they may find that while these guys certainly are very talented they are overall not that serious. Especially as far as this song goes. To me it seems to serve as more of a tongue-in-cheek- kind of humor towards the genre.

“Never Ending Mary” is the fourth track and is actually pretty reminiscent of newer All That Remains and sounds like a hard-hitting metal love ballad — if that makes much sense. Coming in one more time with a short acoustic intro then picking up the pace with some heavier Lamb of God/Protest the Hero stylized rhythms and leading into a smooth chorus with some clean-yet-rough singing which feeds into a “rock’n” bridge which could have lead into a nice thrash around breakdown but instead goes right back to acoustics with an odd-yet-fitting ambient solo.

“Made Home Chili Delicious Italian Beef” is the band’s homage to Italian cuisine and actually enters in with a sound clip from the show Family Guy and their take on speaking Italian (“Scuzi, bobetti boopie?” … That’s all I have on that one, if that’s not enough reason to enjoy the song then I can’t help you). Anyways, Destrage ’s The King is Fat ‘n’ Old is most definitely a very entertaining album on quite a few different levels. It’s incorporation of so many styles and wild sense of humor (with track names like “Smell You Later Fishy Bitch”, “Panda vs. Koala”, and “Back Door Epoque) makes the music highly entertaining without it losing the ability to get one hell of a pit started in a crowd. As far as the “for fans of” portion goes, this is definitely a must have for fans of Protest the Hero, Lamb of God, Soilwork, Nevermore, The Dillinger Escape Pan, Human Abstract, Hell Within, Ankla, and All That Remains.

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