Is this pleasing to you? My unpredictability as an artist is down to nothing more than me being bullheaded. I do things that I want to do. I think, though, that the music industry is historically disingenuous, right? The music represents periods of my life. You have the music that I made when I was 25 , and at 29 , and so on.
You have the music I made when I was angry, and then when I was confused. Which brings us on to your latest album, Empath. How did that come together? So Empath is almost a mission statement. After almost — what? Empath is a gentle way of saying that because I never really fitted in, so why would I invest any more energy trying to suppress who I am, in all the emotionally sensitive ways that manifest themselves as peaks and valleys.
I have kids now, and as I get older the temptation not to push boundaries gets stronger. Is Empath a reaction against that? I realised that I was really bored. So I reacted against that. I realised that if I needed to fuck things up, then I should go ahead and do it.
I wanted to reach people who want to hear me do that, and who will relate to it. Even if it dwindles, what I will have is an audience who listen because they want to.
As I get older, the amount of energy I have to impress people diminishes. Would the young man who stood wide-eyed on the Sunset Strip like the artist he is today? I was so desperate for validation then, but I was the same person that I am today. Four nights. A throwback Bring Me The Horizon set. Bands picked by them. Colour us there…. Devin Townsend on a life of heavy music, experimentalism and never fitting in.
Devin Townsend Project. Wargasm in The K! In December , all four Devin Townsend Project albums with additional material were released as the Contain Us box set. The first three shows were held at the University of London Union, November 10—12, Ki , Addicted , and Deconstruction were each performed on one night, respectively. Despite the Devin Townsend Project being originally a four-album series, Townsend decided to continue working under the moniker and released the fifth album, Epicloud on September 18, Again featuring van Giersbergen on vocals, the album appeared on several European charts, peaking at number 8 in Finland.
The 3-hour performance was recorded in high definition and released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 30, Another project Townsend has mentioned several times between and is Obviouser , an album featuring "creepy, bass driven apocalyptic music" created with an "Ampeg rig" and an "Icelandic choir".
After Deconstruction and Ghost , Townsend announced a new album, Casualties of Cool , [52] with which he started to work after the release of Epicloud. Originally in , Townsend stated that this album will be the sixth and the last album in the Devin Townsend Project series, [54] but he ultimately confirmed that Casualties of Cool is its own project. The funding quickly reached its goal, and all additional funds were put directly to Townsend's upcoming projects.
After writing ideas for over 70 songs, Townsend stated he is finally going to finish the whole project, followed by the announcement the album will be released on October 27, The album itself is a double album, with disc one being the main album and disc two featuring Devin Townsend Project material; according to Townsend, the album's theme is "Ziltoid against the world". After finishing the album, Townsend stated the project was "punishing" and an "absolute nightmare to complete" due to amount of material against tight schedules.
He also described the hardship of the project by telling "if he was ever going to start drinking [again], the last months would have been it", but now "he's starting to get excited again".
Later, "after the chaos of finishing it had subsided", Townsend stated he is really satisfied with the result. In , Devin recorded a 'poppy sounding' song in Los Angeles with producer Brian Howes, but has decided against releasing. Devin mentioned he is against the project being contrived due to the current hard rock undertones in popular music. He described it as a "lukewarm heavy metal Devin song". The hiatus was proven shortlived when Townsend began writing and recording for Transcendence , a new DTP album, in Townsend is married to Tracy Turner , his girlfriend since he was Townsend designed his two main projects, the aggressive Strapping Young Lad and his more melodic solo material, as counterparts.
Townsend's solo material blends many genres and influences, with elements of atmospheric ambient music, [76] hard rock, and progressive rock, [15] along with pop metal and arena rock. Dense and produced with a large amount of ambient elements. As a self-proclaimed "fan of multitracking", [29] Townsend has developed a trademark production style featuring an atmospheric, layered "wall of sound".
Townsend has carried out the mixing and mastering for much of his solo work himself or in tandem with other engineers. He now also uses Open B tuning and Open B flat tuning Open C tuning tuned a half and a whole step down respectively on his six string guitars. Townsend's technique varies from fingerpicking, power chords and polychords to sweep-picked arpeggios and tapping techniques. He is also known for his heavy use of reverb and delay effects.
He has expressed that he has no taste for shred guitar, saying that "musically it doesn't do anything for me" and that he only solos when he thinks that he can within the context of the song. Townsend's employs a variety of vocal techniques in his work, including screaming, growling, and falsetto. Townsend draws influence from a wide range of music genres, most prominently heavy metal. Townsend has cited, among others, Judas Priest, W.
This was the guitar that was used during the shows in support of Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing and City. During the late s and the s, he was also seen with two ESP Telecaster models one white, one black with EMG 81 pickups, which were used for the majority of his six-string material. Peavey also made Townsend a number of custom 7-strings, including one with a single EMG pickup that is used for playing most of the material on Ziltoid the Omniscient.
Aside from his signature model, Townsend also utilizes two custom 6-string Predator models made by Peavey; one with a natural flame-top finish and the DTP logo on the 12th fret, and one in a black finish with a Floyd Rose vibrato unit for Open C and Open B tuning, respectively. In , Townsend announced that he was using other guitars besides his Peavey models, including two Sadowsky Telecaster models and a number of Framus semi-hollow body guitars.
I really like that V. No one is entirely happy with that decision, but I find it difficult to not be straight up with folks about what I want to play and do and have typically pissed people off as a result The bottom line though is I like what I like and it is important to the music to be accurate with tones and vibe.
The guitars I actually play, I really like, regardless of brand. For Strapping Young Lad and solo projects from —, Townsend mainly used the Peavey head, with Mesa Boogie and Marshall 4x12 cabinets, for his main sounds. He would also run a 3rd signal into a s Roland GP, which would be amplified by a Mesa Boogie tube power amp.
He would still make use of the Peavey head for some solo recordings, such as Synchestra. Townsend also utilizes D'Addario strings. As of , he reintroduced the Dual Rectifier into his rig using a wet-dry-wet setup with the Dual Rectifier being the center dry sound and the AxeFx being the stereo effected sounds using the model of the Dual Rectifier as a basis.
The following is from a text file on the Physicist Enhanced CD :. Devin is a high school graduate who won a scholarship for literature, but turned it down to ultimately pursue music. He was president of the student council, which I'm told was won through quite a campaign, and he was a member of the choir and a few stage bands, playing guitar and tuba.
After high school Devin completed broadcast school, and said goodbye to anymore formal education. Dev picked up the banjo at age five, then moved on to guitar at age He gave lessons through his teens and by age 15 was in a band writing and playing their own shows of Devin's own music.
The band was called Grey Skies, which eventually turned into Noisescapes and was signed. Devin got his break in the music industry when submitting a tape to Relativity Records back in the early 90s. This was coincidentally the label Steve Vai was making records for, and coincidentally Steve Vai was looking for a vocalist at the time. They're all real cute, they all sing really well and they all write nice, safe stuff. But Devin Townsend made this tape called Noisescapes that's just the hardest core industrial, heavy metal-but-melodic music imaginable.
He's 20 now, but he was just 19 when he made the tape. He sent it to my record company [Relativity] and I got it through them. As soon as I heard one minute of Devin, I knew he was someone special. We got together at my place in Tahoe. It was just me, him and my engineer Liz, rolling in the snow and jumping in my Jacuzzi. He has a really great attitude. He's willing to try anything. And he's really an extrovert - you know, a great lead singer". I had put together this demo called "Noisescapes" and sent it out in a pair of my old stinky underwear.
I taped the cassettes to the crotch and put the bio in the top, and whoever I sent the tapes to, I'd address the underwear to them at the top, like "hey pal, these gibs are for you" or whatever. So one morning I got a call from Cliff Cultreri at Relativity, and they flew me to New York and gave me a deal for my own stuff. I started recording the "Noisescapes" album before any mention of Steve, then all of a sudden Cliff phoned me saying that Steve Vai needs a singer, he likes your tape, why don't you give him a call?
So I did, and we hung out for a while, and we seemed to get along fine, so that was it Devin impressed and scared tons of guitar fans who happened to pick up the Vai disc. Not only was a fan base development begun but the doorway to his solo material swung wide open. The First Strapping Young Lad disc was soon in play. Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, described by Devin as dump-trucks going across Antarctica with a beat underneath, hit the shelves from Century Media records. Devin hath delivered, and it was good.
Next up on Dev's agenda was the Punky Bruster disc. Devin and Adrian, along with John Harder to take over for bass, were the three driving forces on this punk mockery titled Cooked on Phonics. Over the past few years, the success that Devin has slowly worked for has fortunately come with the power to control his own creative destiny. There has been a strangely conservative trend within the heavy music scene with the industry needing to define artists as one particular thing.
Often that relegates musicians to boxes that are very limited. If you play heavy music, what genre of heavy music are you to be categorized under? If you play anything with a pop aesthetic, are you selling out? So what does one do if a single category does not contain the breadth of the expression that needs to come forth?
If you have a history of heavy music -yet have skills that extend into different realms- getting any attention from those outside genres is next to impossible. You are automatically relegated to the metal world and that world alone. It has been well known to those proficient in heavy music that it can represent emotions in ways that no other music can, and can add a dynamic to emotional music that makes the topics truly heavy.
Devin has always had this ethos, and his fanbase has quietly followed him through a myriad of styles over the years where he has applied this. If the desire and the ability to play different styles is not done to be provocative, but rather to illustrate a full spectrum of musical emotions, why would one not want to follow that? Devin has decided to see what would happen if all the styles that make up his current interests were finally represented in one place.
The musical dynamics represented on this single album are broad, challenging, and immense. The theme of the work was based in participating with all of what makes life so simultaneously beautiful and challenging, and to not neither fear those things, nor let them define us. A roller coaster of emotion that makes each consecutive section that much more effective. Having a constant thread throughout makes it a thrilling and constantly interesting sonic experience.
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