The Devin Townsend Project

Addicted (HevyDevy Records, 2009)

http://www.myspace.com/devintownsenddtb

Reviewed by Scott.

You may be familiar with Devin Townsend as the guy with the skullet from Strapping Young Lad. Before you read any further, just look at this picture: http://gunshyassassin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Devin+Townsend+devin_having_fun.jpg.

Fucking great right? Anyway, Strapping Young Lad is an awesome band, and if you’re looking for some intense, complex metal that’s very listenable at the same time, SLY is hard to beat. (I saw them once at a big outdoor festival. Devin accosted the crowd for not staying home and watching Live 8 or whatever it was, then left with the stage with something like “Go suck a turd to a point and stab yourself with it! Fuck you! Buy our shit!” That was also the day I encountered a pack of rabid GWAR fans in the parking lot and watched them punch out the side view mirrors of cars, but that’s a story for another day!)

But parallel to his career with SYL, Devin Townsend has released a number of solo albums under various names. Right now, he’s working as The Devin Townsend Project (as opposed to his previous incarnation as The Devin Townsend Band). The solo stuff is heavy but nothing like the fast, blasting style of SYL, and it’s much more melodic and eclectic. Vocals switch back and forth between growling, screaming, and clean singing, sometimes belted out and sometimes brought down to a whisper (and sometimes all of these styles layered on top of each other). While there’s a ton of variety in Devin’s solo catalog, a few things stay consistent from album to album. Along with the mixed vocal style, each album has a wall of sound kind of feel – everything heavy, dense, layered – except for moments when it all drops off, quiet moments that pull back into ambient sound, echoing guitar, hushed vocals. The guitar riffs are usually simple, often just big full chords, decorated with intricate leads, and they build on the patterns of the rhythm section to give the songs a weighted feeling. Lyrically Devin is all over the place, but he tends to write slightly vague, personal stuff, which is sometimes very serious (and occasionally moving) and sometimes absurd. What makes it all so good—and consistently interesting—is the emotional ebb and flow of his work: moving between the big fuck-all rockers; the fun, silly stuff; the experimental, weird stuff; the quiet, contemplative stuff; and the moments of real beauty and power; all in the course of a single album and often in a single song.

This newest album, Addicted, is the second in a four part series that will be released under the name The Devin Townsend Project (the next two are slated for 2011). I’ll just briefly mention the first album, 2009’s Ki. Devin’s sound is always evolving (while sticking to those basic features I outlined above), but Ki is perhaps his most radical shift. Instead of the usual bombastic frenzy, the emphasis is on the groove: everything is kept subdued and relatively stripped down, chugging along at a simmer with basic (but so solid) drums and repetitive riffs and only occasionally building up into a dull roar that quickly drops down again. This being a Devin album, though, there’s some variety, like the Elvis-esque “Trainfire,” the gorgeous “Lady Helen,” and “Quiet Riot,” which is an acoustic reworking of “Cum On Feel The Noize” with different lyrics.

Addicted is a return to the more familiar Devin style but injected with a big dose of dancey pop music (which for some metal oriented folks might be a lethal dose). There’s always been a strong pop influence in Devin’s music under the layers of heavy guitars and metal screams, but Addicted really puts it into the forefront by adding drum loops (with some of that throbbing techno bass drum), female vocals, and some goddamn catchy hooks. It’s like his album Infinity filtered through a Euro dance club  -- and I realize how fucking awful that sounds but still, it works.

This is a high energy album, reflected in the fact that the title of every song ends with an exclamation point (except for the last track, which has two.) Because I’m feeling lazy I’m going to shamelessly rip off my colleague Anita Papsmear’s technique of running this down song by song. It looks like you can listen to every song in its entirety on youtube, so don’t take my word for it but check out this stuff yourself.

1) “Addicted!”
The album opener begins with a moment of diminishing ambient sound and then a very simple, ugly riff, followed by the drums pounding out the time on the hi hat and bass drum. This moves into a typical Devin sort of rhythm but then the drum loops and keyboard stuff kick in and you realize you’re dealing with something a little different. The rest of the song is a catchy, pop-industrial tune, with Devin singing about his addiction to porn (really – Devin’s mental issues have famously been the source of material for both SYL and solo work, but this is a new twist in his psycho-musical oeuvre). Anneke van Giersbergen (ex-The Gathering) provides nice harmonies on this one; she’ll take a more prominent role in songs to come.

2) “Universe in a Ball!”
One of the cooler moments on this album is the intro to this track: a big, busy drum fill that breaks down the end of the last track, goes wild for a few seconds, then settles into a slower, grooving tempo that carries through the rest of the song. There’s sort of a White Zombie vibe going on here, although strictly in a musical sense.

3) “Bend It Like Bender!”
This song is where that dancey pop side of the album really begins to show. Anneke van Giersbergen sings the chorus, which in a way is totally obnoxious and the kind of thing I’d usually hate, but … I just can’t. Lyrically, this isn’t “about” Bender from the show Futurama in any obvious sense, but there’s a soundclip from the show in there, so I’ll chalk it up to Devin being weird. At one point he sings “You know it's heavy / When we look into that open void / But animals don't think of it at all,” which ties into an ongoing theme in Devin’s work that deals with struggling to understand the universe and our place in it as human beings (“Just talking meat” as he puts it on another album). It’s hard to tell what he’s getting at but this vagueness allows listeners to pull different meanings out of it, which can be nice (but frustrating when artists are dealing with ostensibly political/social issues).

4) “Supercrush!”
As the title implies, this is one heavy fucking song. Big chugging guitars and even bigger keyboards and vocals going on. More van Giersbergen on the verse, and on the chorus Devin sings “I don't want to save my soul now / I don't want to lose control / And even if it takes a lifetime to learn / I'll learn,” getting back to that theme of addiction. This is closer to the typical Devin sound, and one of the best tunes here.

5) “Hyperdrive!”
Probably my favorite song on the album (it’s the first song on his myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/devintownsenddtb). This originally appear on Ziltoid The Omniscient, Devin’s space opera about some super powerful alien being that comes to Earth demanding the best cup of coffee we puny humans can muster. The original version was a little more laid back (and had a drum machine for chrissakes), and the vocals were on the quieter side. Here, it gets the full band treatment and van Giersbergen belts out the lead vocals like her life depends on it. There’s also a good lead riff, which stands out on an album that puts more emphasis on rhythm than riffage.

6) “Resolve!”
This is a catchy tune, pretty straightforward. At this point you might feel like van Giersbergen has taken over the album, because Devin’s mostly in the background screaming (and you’d be right!) But it’s still cool.

7) “Ih-Ah!”
Well, this is it. If you were able to get through the album and deal with all the dancable pop stuff, here is the big test. When I first heard this I thought it was a cover of a Katy Perry song or something. This is pure emotional pop, complete with syrupy lyrics about l-o-v-e. During the melodic intro, Devin even does the little “ooooo ooooo” vocal warm up thing people do before they start singing (you know what I mean). I’m just waiting for someone to sing this on Glee. But goddamn, this is a catchy song, and for all the contributions the man has made to the world of metal, I’ll give him this one.

8) “The Way Home!”
Back to more rocking fare. This starts out like a metal song but with quiet vocals and clean guitars (the drums are doing a cool double bass pattern). Everything builds up over the course of the song until Devin breaks out the faux-opera vocals, which make an appearance or two on every album. One of the better songs here.

9) “Numbered!”
The beginning of this song evokes the very first tune on the album, but then it opens up into a big soaring chorus with van Giersbergen singing, and back to a more driving verse. There’s also some fantastic guitar playing in the bridge.

10) “Awake!!”
This is a good closer for the album -- it has a feeling of completeness, a similar kind of vibe to “Slow Me Down” from Accelerated Evolution. The song ends with the band fading out and leaving drum loops playing, kind of exposing the electronica skeleton beneath the music.

So overall, an eclectic but catchy and pop-infused addition to the Devin Townsend catalog. The difference between Ki (part one of the Devin Townsend Project’s four album series) and this (part two) is pretty extreme, so it’ll be fascinating to see what parts three and four sound like. If you haven’t guessed by now, Devin Townsend is one of my favorite artists -- he’s one of those musicians with a unique sound that’s informed by an even more unique personality. This might not be his best album (although I hesitate to think of his albums in terms of best or worst), but it’s pretty fucking great.