DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT
Devin Townsend is a Canadian Tour De Force; his style has both Metal, Rock and Symphony components. Though his greatest component may be his spirit, all his music shows a deep spiritual connection to the messages close to his own thoughts.
Devin Townsend started in Strapping Young Lads in Vancouver in 1994, the band was known for their extreme metal music. Devin started out as a one man project and he played most of the instruments that featured on the album ‘Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing’. By 1997 he had a permanent line up of musicians working for him. In 1997 they released an album called ‘City’ and this album shot to success. In 1999-2002 the band went on hiatus. When they returned it 2003 with the album ‘Strapping Young Lad’ it reached the billboard charts, then they toured heavily throughout 2003 and 2004 through the Europe, USA, Canada and Australia. In 2005 ‘Strapping Young Lads’ released the album ‘Alien’ this album reached number 32 on the billboard charts. In 2006 Strapping young lads released the album ‘The New Black’ which hit number 15 on the top independent album charts. In 2002 Devin Townsend started ‘The Devin Townsend project. He was working on ‘The Devin Townsend Project’ while he was with the ‘The Strapping Young Lads’. In 2007 Devin Townsend and ‘Strapping young lads’ took a two year break.
In 2009 ‘The Devin Townsend Project’ released an album called ‘Addicted’ and followed up this with touring through North America, Europe and Australia. In 2011 Devin Townsend Project released the albums ‘Deconstruction’ and ‘Ghost’. In 2014 Devin Townsend released ‘Casualties of Cool’ which was supported by a crowd funding project Devin put up. In 2016 Devin Townsend released his seventh studio album ‘Transcendence’.
When Devin was asked if he would perform with ‘The Strapping Young Lads’ he replied with “What I needed to learn about strapping young lad was 25 year old problems and I’m 45 now. I think that anybody that likes what I do if I tried to get up there and pretend I was 25 again they would see through it. That doesn’t make any sense for the nostalgia thing and the pay check makes sense but for me as a human being and going back to that makes less than zero sense.” This means that unfortunately he won’t be putting Strapping Young Lad back together any time in the foreseeable future.
When a reporter asked about working with a band called ‘Come Back’ Devin said, “Andrew is a friend of mine and Stu as well. I mean years ago, I produced two albums by a band called Misery Signals; it was part of that scene but Canada is a small scene. I worked with Andrew on a side project of his, and I produced an album called sights and sounds that was his band.”
Devin doesn’t work with bands for money; he would prefer to have a personal relationship with the artists. Devin said “I do work with other bands typically because I have a relationship with them. I get asked a lot to sing but unless I know somebody in fact I turned down a couple of people recently that would of made sense for me to contribute to their record because their famous, but there is no reason for us to do it. Truly I think it’s important that if you are going to lend your voice to somebody, that it’s rooted in having a relationship of some sort because other than that it’s a scene thing you know. Like when you are trying to get photos of yourself with somebody like selfies, it doesn’t really work for me.”
Where many lead singers find their way to lead guitar, the reason for Devin picking up bass was because “Bass for me is just another example of you can sit back you can support and then finally as a Canadian because we are a passive aggressive group, bass is awesome because whatever your playing is what rules its quietly powerful, I love that you know if you choose to be in the key of b everyone else is fucked so it’s a combination of those two things.”
Currently Devin has stated he is working on 4 albums, though his process is very archaic, it happens when he feels like writing, meaning that from day to day he may be working on 4 to 5 things of varying quality. Unfortunately Ziltoid 3 has been ruled out, the alternative version of Devin, is at the moment banished to the moon until he gets creative again.
Devin tries to like at things other than Politics and Religion, he would rather have a distraction from the drama of personal opinions, and this is a refreshing approach from someone in the public eye. This spiritual singer and weaver of melodies is a delight to interview and a once in a generation performer, I highly recommend you catch his next show.
