The Devil Wears Prada Can Do Whatever It Wants

It’s hard to find a band today that’s more synonymous with metalcore music than the Devil Wears Prada. The Dayton, Ohio, group got together in 2005, when founding vocalist Mike Hranica was just seventeen years old, and went on to sonically define an underground subgenre that blew up with the help of MySpace and the Warped Tour.

Early albums such as Plagues (2007) and With Roots Above and Branches Below (2009) pushed the nascent metalcore sound into the mainstream, and Prada, as Hranica refers to his lifelong band, has been an unstoppable force ever since, still thriving decades after many contemporaries have fallen by the wayside.

“I think Prada’s an important vehicle in the genre. I think that would be hard to argue, but at the same time I don’t consider that a pat on the back,” the wild-eyed frontman admits. “I consider Prada being a force as its own thing. It’s not me. It’s not Jeremy [DePoyster, founding guitarist]. We’re just kind of the legs stilting up this thing that we’ve built.”

But since turning 34 last December, Hranica has been thinking more about what Prada has meant to him. “It’s been a number of months of putting it into the perspective of this has been half my life,” he explains. “Just realizing it’s something I think about and do. It’s defined me for half my life.”

His approach to Prada has also changed in the “least sexy ways,” he adds, from a more carefree teenage view of “Welp, I’m in the van, and we’ll see what happens next year,” to, “I need to do this, this, this next year, because I have a mortgage to pay, and this is my means of surviving as an adult.”

It’s not something he believes fans would find too riveting, as he considers himself a “pretty boring person, in terms of scheduling, and regimented” nowadays. But given that Prada albums continue to consistently land on the Billboard charts, including 2022’s Color Decay, it’s safe to say that fans are still paying attention and interested in what the band is up to.

In support of Color Decay, the Devil Wears Prada is playing the Fillmore Auditorium on Wednesday, September 20, with Fit for a King, Counterparts and LANDMVRKS on what’s being billed as the Metalcore Dropouts tour.

Prada used a different approach when compiling Color Decay, which peaked at No. 31 on the U.S. indie chart and snuck onto the Billboard 200 list that consists of all American albums, according to Hranica. The band started with singles “Watchtower” and “Sacrifice” before “building an album from that," he says.

Musically it diverged as well, with Hranica and bandmates DePoyster, Kyle Sipress (guitar), Jonathan Gering (keyboards, synthesizers and programming), Giuseppe Capolupo (drums) and Mason Nagy (bass) adding more hard rock into their classic metalcore formula. “It was a little bit different, but one of the things Prada really focuses on is the chemical model, as far as knowing that we could push boundaries further than maybe other bands can or than we have in the past and really working with that,” the well-spoken singer says.

“Pushing what metalcore can be in terms of rock and what rock can be in terms of metalcore is a big part of how we look at making songs,” he continues. “That was definitely happening when we were making Color Decay, and it’s happening as we’re moving forward.”

The band’s newer alternative metalcore offerings are also indicative of what’s happening in the scene overall, which comprises “a lot of evolution in hard rock,” as Hranica sees it. “I think where hard rock went in the ’90s into the 2000s is a lot of what we’re seeing now, in terms of what’s populating with people who listen to heavy music,” he explains. “I think that metalcore really scratched an itch and has become popular enough to blow up and reach a much bigger audience.”

While no one will confuse the Devil Wears Prada with Nickelback, the band represents “the new heavy, in a lot of ways,” according to Hranica, especially since “there’s a larger consumer than just an underground scene.”

Changing things up isn’t necessarily new to the band, either. Concept EPs Zombie (2010) and Space (2015) are proof that Prada can seemingly do no wrong in admirers’ eyes (both releases claimed the No. 2 spot on the indie chart).

“I perceive it as very much just a welcomed challenge. I can’t imagine making music [using]...a one-way road, creatively,” Hranica says.

Concerts now are a refreshing showcase of everything Prada has done during the past eighteen years.

“I simply abhor the thought of someone thinking that they didn’t get their money’s worth, especially when you’re around this long,” Hranica concludes. “You can’t take it for granted, you can’t mail it in. Who knows when someone decides that they don’t want to come see you the next time?”

The Devil Wears Prada, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 20, Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 North Clarkson Street. Tickets are $49-$207.