4 out of 5

Label: Southern

Produced by: Jeff Dahl

All those references you make to Sabbath and Yes and whatever other 70s metal / prog tickles yer long-haired fancy: smush ’em together and boil them, then somehow put the results to tape and hit play.  The recording quality is cleaner, and there’s something of a punk influence here and there, but otherwise what you’re hearing is Darediablo.

Twenty Paces’ variations can be witnessed through the mighty trio of opening tracks: the opening title track’s quiet-to-loud layering slowburn, the insane finger-tapping blister of ‘Apache Chicken,’ and the marching beat rock of ‘Batten Down the Hatches.’  The level production can give the indication that this is just a one-trick pony just sped up or slowed down, but there’s more subtlety to it than that: Jake Garcia (bass), Matthew Holford (guitar, organ) and Peter Karp (drums – and totally a 70s-sounding name) are doing their due diligence, shifting their playing styles just enough to match whichever era to which a current track plays tribute.  And that subtlety ends up being what makes the album work for the long-run.  Now I’m not saying that DD is aiming for the stars, here – with song names like ‘Nife Fite on Wife Nite’ it’s obvious we’re hangin’ around in Oxes in-it-for-the-fun territory – but by staying true to each song and not just trying to pummel the listener with fancy guitar tricks, although this mindfulness lends itself to some filler (the bar-background ‘Roster of Evil,’ or ‘The Sidekick’), when a track ignites – such as the punk-fueled explosions on ‘Papier Mache Miracle’ – it really catches your ear.  Then, the more you get familiar with the peaks and valleys of the disc, those in-between moments are valuable warm-ups.  After all, most instrumental discs wear on the ear after so many tracks; smart sequencing can be what carries you through the album.

So Darediablo might not have the eclectic tricks of Don Cab / Battles or the headline-worthy hairstyle of Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale, but they’ve got chops equal to any of your preferred instrumental / 70s-metal-influenced faves, and ‘Twenty Paces’ shows the band in full bloom, with each moment considered for its full-on rock-and-roll impact.