“Devin [Townsend] thought that a way to make [his original] demo grab peoples’ attention was to mail it wrapped in a pair of his old underwear,” so reads Hevy Devy Records’s biography of the musician. Townsend is one of the most eccentric and creative forces in today’s progressive metal scene. Born in 1972 and raised in New Westminster Canada, he found himself drawn to music at an early age. The first instrument Townsend picked up was the banjo, but later he switched to electric guitar. Currently Townsends’ most well-known projects are Strapping Young Lad and his solo albums. Even within the two distinct projects, each album retains its own individuality. It is possible that the varying tones in each album reflect his ongoing battle with self-diagnosed bi-polarity. In an attempt to quell said bi-polarity, he checked himself into a Canadian mental hospital. Arguably, this stay was unsuccessful. Since the stay, his albums have only become more discordant.
The first album from Strapping Young Lad was written, recorded, and produced by Townsend in 1995. He performed most of the instrumentation, but also enlisted the help of a few other musicians on a couple of tracks. Eventually he was able to find the right people to play his music live so that he could go on tour with SYL. Although the firdt SYL album is considered a classic now, in the first six months of its release it only sold 143 copies. Townsend’s dark sense of humor is very apparent from the beginning., besides the aptly titled Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, the songs Happy Camper, Critic, and Satan’s ice-cream Truck manage to gather every single metal cliché and deliver them in a nicely wrapped package. Even the critics had fun describing the album. Chaz Thorndike from the magazine Lollipop wrote “there should be a warning on this that says, ‘use cation when listening. Contents may rip you a new a@#hole and leave you turned inside out like a discarded sock.” Another review from Andy Stout of Metal Hammer wrote “i9gnore the name, its just a frivolous whim emblazoned on the front of one of the most disturbing albums you’ll hear for a very long time. A bit like ‘the Exorcist’ being released as ‘Fluffy Wuffy Cottontail.’”
Following this, Townsend unleashed another album under the name Punky Bruster. In this album, Townsend went as far as to create a fake band and even gave it a back story. Recorded and released in 1996 this album attacks the “new punk” sound that was taking the music business by storm. The most prominent song on this album is called Fake Punk and the lyrics easily describe Townsend’s view of the punk bands at the time. “I’ve always tried to dig myself out of the sewer/I’ve always tried to be a little bit more well-read/But oh no! Here comes that rock press interviewer so/I’ll just look real tough and say F$#k a lot instead.” Although this album never got very popular with the media, it offers proof of Townsend’s creative genius.
The second SYL album is probably the most revered and sought after. Entitled City and released in 1997, Townsend gathered a full band and hit the road on a U.S. tour. Again SynThis album had a more structured feeling to it, although it still carried Townsend’s disfigured style and humor. “turned through the mixer, the result is a distinct apocalyptic chaos, but sounds like a miracle – absolute, logical, retraced. The chaos proceeds, as though to speak in orderly tracks what lies in Townsend’s talent to embellish the most weird, tonal inferno but still beautiful, catchy melodies.” Wrote one reviewer by the name of Frank Albrecht. Still, others did not find the second helping of SYL to be worth the wait. Liam Sheils from KERRANG!! Magazine wrote :the guitars on “City” pulverize, the drums only spasmodically drop below warp speed and the vocals sound like the death cries of the entire Klingon home world. There’s not even a whiff of melody, save for the oddly out-of-place ‘Room 429,’ and the overall effect is like sticking your head into the jet nozzle of a stealth bomber.”
In 2006 Townsend released a solo album called Synchestra. It is hailed as the best Townsend solo album ever. The way Townsend mixes different styles of music into one big kaleidoscope of happiness is nothing short of genius. No reviewer had anything bad to say about this work. The review from Music Street Journal sums up all the other reviews about this album. It states “the latest DTB extravaganza is an incredibly diverse and ambitious epic that unites such disparate influences as acoustic folk, blast beat metal, new age, surf-rock, classic rock, Floyd-style spaciness, doom metal and world beat sounds. It is very exhausting to listen to in one sitting but it is amazing how Townsend is able to weave all of it together.”
So picture a young Devin Townsend, sitting in a small room in his home in Canada. He’s putting some demo tapes together and figures that the only way he’ll stand out in the music business is if he wraps and mails his demos in his old underwear. Oddly enough this tactic worked, one of Townsend’s demos ended up in the hands of the guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who was so impressed with Townsend’s vocal capabilities that he hired Townsend to sing on his 1993 release Sex and Religion and took him on a world tour.
The first album from Strapping Young Lad was written, recorded, and produced by Townsend in 1995. He performed most of the instrumentation, but also enlisted the help of a few other musicians on a couple of tracks. Eventually he was able to find the right people to play his music live so that he could go on tour with SYL. Although the firdt SYL album is considered a classic now, in the first six months of its release it only sold 143 copies. Townsend’s dark sense of humor is very apparent from the beginning., besides the aptly titled Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, the songs Happy Camper, Critic, and Satan’s ice-cream Truck manage to gather every single metal cliché and deliver them in a nicely wrapped package. Even the critics had fun describing the album. Chaz Thorndike from the magazine Lollipop wrote “there should be a warning on this that says, ‘use cation when listening. Contents may rip you a new a@#hole and leave you turned inside out like a discarded sock.” Another review from Andy Stout of Metal Hammer wrote “i9gnore the name, its just a frivolous whim emblazoned on the front of one of the most disturbing albums you’ll hear for a very long time. A bit like ‘the Exorcist’ being released as ‘Fluffy Wuffy Cottontail.’”
Following this, Townsend unleashed another album under the name Punky Bruster. In this album, Townsend went as far as to create a fake band and even gave it a back story. Recorded and released in 1996 this album attacks the “new punk” sound that was taking the music business by storm. The most prominent song on this album is called Fake Punk and the lyrics easily describe Townsend’s view of the punk bands at the time. “I’ve always tried to dig myself out of the sewer/I’ve always tried to be a little bit more well-read/But oh no! Here comes that rock press interviewer so/I’ll just look real tough and say F$#k a lot instead.” Although this album never got very popular with the media, it offers proof of Townsend’s creative genius.
The second SYL album is probably the most revered and sought after. Entitled City and released in 1997, Townsend gathered a full band and hit the road on a U.S. tour. Again SynThis album had a more structured feeling to it, although it still carried Townsend’s disfigured style and humor. “turned through the mixer, the result is a distinct apocalyptic chaos, but sounds like a miracle – absolute, logical, retraced. The chaos proceeds, as though to speak in orderly tracks what lies in Townsend’s talent to embellish the most weird, tonal inferno but still beautiful, catchy melodies.” Wrote one reviewer by the name of Frank Albrecht. Still, others did not find the second helping of SYL to be worth the wait. Liam Sheils from KERRANG!! Magazine wrote :the guitars on “City” pulverize, the drums only spasmodically drop below warp speed and the vocals sound like the death cries of the entire Klingon home world. There’s not even a whiff of melody, save for the oddly out-of-place ‘Room 429,’ and the overall effect is like sticking your head into the jet nozzle of a stealth bomber.”
In 2006 Townsend released a solo album called Synchestra. It is hailed as the best Townsend solo album ever. The way Townsend mixes different styles of music into one big kaleidoscope of happiness is nothing short of genius. No reviewer had anything bad to say about this work. The review from Music Street Journal sums up all the other reviews about this album. It states “the latest DTB extravaganza is an incredibly diverse and ambitious epic that unites such disparate influences as acoustic folk, blast beat metal, new age, surf-rock, classic rock, Floyd-style spaciness, doom metal and world beat sounds. It is very exhausting to listen to in one sitting but it is amazing how Townsend is able to weave all of it together.”
So picture a young Devin Townsend, sitting in a small room in his home in Canada. He’s putting some demo tapes together and figures that the only way he’ll stand out in the music business is if he wraps and mails his demos in his old underwear. Oddly enough this tactic worked, one of Townsend’s demos ended up in the hands of the guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who was so impressed with Townsend’s vocal capabilities that he hired Townsend to sing on his 1993 release Sex and Religion and took him on a world tour.
