The undead haunt new EP from The Devil Wears Prada

 

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Writing the five-song collection posed a challenge for Hranica and the rest of his band, which includes rhythm guitarist/vocalist Jeremy DePoyster, lead guitarist Chris Rubey, bassist Andy Trick, drummer Daniel Williams and keyboardist James Baney.

"I thought it might be a little tough at first," Hranica said. "It was a lot of fun to be able to just come up with something creatively that doesn't have to be as serious as a full length."

Hranica explained The Devil Wears Prada, which is working on a new full-length collection, opted for an EP because he feared that fans would have found the concept a bit tiring on an LP.

"A full length would have been a little much, as far as doing this joke concept," he said. "I think a full length would have been way too much. An EP is cool listening through it. You get the whole idea of it. You get plenty of zombies, but not to the point where you want to skip the rest of the CD or anything, like getting bored of it. I think doing something like this that's meant really to be fun shouldn't have been a full length.

"We wanted a new release for the fans to have while we cook up a new full length. Rather than putting out a full length every single year, we wanted to do something like this where the fans get something new, but nothing that's nothing like full length material."

A press release descrobes the "Zombie EP" as an extremely heavy record that includes songs such as "Survivor," which follows the plight of a man who loses his beloved to the undead and ultimately, in surviving the zombie plague, spends his days warding off the brain-starved and loneliness. The story continues to unfold with the tracks "Outnumbered," "Escape," "Revive" and "Anatomy." "Outnumbered" is the sole song from the EP that The Devil Wears Prada is playing on its tour.

"It's a lot of the heaviest material we've ever come up with," Hranica said. "There are parts on [2009's] 'With Roots Above [And Branches Below]' that I think are just as heavy as the 'Zombie EP.' For the most part, it doesn't have jam, almost ambient types of parts. It's more just straight-forward, hard-hitting stuff. It doesn't have that many slow spacey parts. It's very relentless."