Devil Electric's Emotional Return with 'Tahlia' Album

Previously on… Devil Electric

Melbourne doom merchants Devil Electric have returned from the void. Five years of silence, fracture, and whatever the universe decided to throw at them in the interim — and they’ve come back with Tahlia, their third studio album, and honestly their most emotionally loaded release to date. It’s out now. It hits hard. You should already be listening.

About Tahlia

At its core this is an album about things falling apart — relationships cracking under pressure, people surviving situations that probably should have broken them, the specific kind of pain that doesn’t make noise until it does. The themes are heavy by design, and then life went and made them heavier by mirroring the years that followed the recording. That’s not marketing copy. That’s just how it landed.

The title track kicks things off and it is exactly the kind of riff-driven return that makes you exhale. Doom metal and heavy rock in a tango, with Pierina’s vocals doing what they do best — soaring through a descent from rock bottom to something resembling the other side. Tahlia as a concept nods to the Latin phrase “that which nourishes me, destroys me,” and the track earns that framing through energetic verses, chanting choruses, and the sort of moody riffage that sticks to you.

From there, “Jill and Jack Shit” shows up with attitude to spare — spitting vocals, sharp edges, and a swagger that has Melbourne written all over it. It doesn’t apologise for anything, and it shouldn’t have to.

Third single “Weirdos” pushes the tempo further into punchy, contemporary hard rock territory before the album takes a left turn into “When We Talk About Nothing.” Inspired by Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, it strips things back and drags you somewhere heavier and more exposed — which turns out to be exactly the setup needed for “Acid Bath.”

Devil Electric – “Weirdos” – OfficiaL Video

“Acid Bath” is an instrumental collaboration with Lex Waterreus of Seedy Jezus, and it is a slow-burn descent into hazy, unhinged territory. Massive wall of sound. Guitar solo that soars. Vocal loops from Lex that are genuinely unhinged in the best possible way. Doom fans, psychedelic fans, heavy rock fans — this track is going to get played on repeat by all of them and they won’t be able to explain exactly why. They won’t need to.

And then there’s “This Hereafter.” Nine minutes. The longest thing Devil Electric have ever put to tape. The most epic doom moment in their catalogue. It builds and releases and crushes and exhales like pushing a boulder through desert sand before the oasis appears at the end. Lyrically it’s the most vulnerable moment on the record — Pierina’s voice audibly breaks in the closing lines, and that’s not a production choice, that’s just what happens when you put something that real into a microphone. It leaves you with something fragile but real. A glimmer. Which, given everything Tahlia puts you through to get there, feels earned.

If you’re a fan of Black Sabbath, Graveyard, Kadavar, The Dead Weather, Blues Pills, The Well, or Electric Citizen — you already know what to do. And if you’ve somehow never heard Devil Electric before, Tahlia is a perfectly brutal place to start.