devin townsend c/d

The Mighty Masturbator is how I wish all music was, sometimes

This guy is just the best.

kinda wanna poll devin vs ginger wildheart. it'd be one of the most apt polls in ilm history. but it'd get about 4 votes

they're both songwriting/recording heroes operating in a hyper-maximalist hyper-melodic prog-metal-pop realm; they both have a massive cardiacs fetish (i think) and they've both been involved in about 424892298 different projects each, INCLUDING each other, right at the outset. but how their paths have diverged!

not so much, in fact - they're both doing the poppiest work of their careers right now (amongst the chaos), and they've both recruited a honey-voiced female vocalist to help them

idk. i can't choose between them. if pressed, devin probably wins, but shit, not by much, and only because he wrote the album 'deconstruction'. but then i remember that ginger masterminded 'mutation' and that fucken enormous 'albion' record last year alone. they're both attempting to explode the sun. i wish them luck.

Never listened to ginger but love devin. Would I like him? Entry point?

same here lemme know imago

right, so

ginger's songwriting is much, much more british than devin's - more focus on knotty melodies, more 'bits', more attitude - this might not endear him to you so much! he's much more of an acquired taste imo - devin can probably snare fans from a much broader cross-section of music tastes. certainly devin townsend is much better at creating dreampop and states of sheer sonic bliss out of treated guitar (and voice).

nevertheless, and knowing you two a little bit as i do, i'd say:

the song 'sky babies' - this will tell you if you will like his proggier stuff (skip to the last five minutes if you get bored):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuHVrh3NL6w

ahhh but he's developed some since the wildhearts' heyday. 'sky babies' is twenty years old! it is to him what early SYL is to devin. but the album it's on, 'fishing for luckies', is absolutely fucking incredible. here's another wonderful track from it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scvmD41UJWg

let's leap a little more into the present. ah fine let's have one more wildhearts. from the astonishing album 'endless nameless' where they basically decided to create, deliberately, the most atrociously-mastered record of all time. it's glorious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK_trE9qdfY

one more coz of

the riff

the SNARE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR3-TtFU-YM

RIGHT, that's enough wildhearts. let's have a look at his more contemporary stuff, which I think you will like MORE!

Hey! Hello! is the single project of his I'd most recommend to you two. In which Ginger teams up with a (ridiculously enthusiastic) female vocalist (not unlike Devin's recent accomplice) and transcends his metier! Here's a selection from the album! Get the album!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jN040ErUqc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNga2vAZQew

^I fucking love this, trenchant music biz commentary & all, mostly for the chorus, when it finally arrives

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Sf4ryFP7w

^have another video! as pure pop as Ginger gets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju-azNSoJNo

^^^this one really is reminiscent of Devin at points. amazing album closer

...and then there's his recent 'solo' stuff, much of which is pitched part way between Hey! Hello! and The Wildhearts, and involves many of the same personnel. IMO, his most Devin-esque solo album has been the most recent - Albion, which I think is now on general iTunes release after initially being a pledgemusic-only deal - I got it at the time and some days it's like absolute crack to me. Pop-metal bliss from start to finish. I can only pick one? OK...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z1hIly1r_o

^THE OUTRO

then there's his earlier solo stuff - the 555% album especially, which is enormous. i haven't heard all of it. i'll throw one in almost at random:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HycWF_kEvE

^everyone seems to love this one. listening to it now, it goes to some wonderful, wonderful places

And now...I'd probably not be able to end this post without something by Mutation. But you're not required to like it ;)

Ironically, Mutation is probably the closest he's gotten to certain Devin projects. Probably the wrong ones as far as you're concerned, though.

If you don't like all of the above, well, at least I tried, hey?

Maxed out my Youtube allowance! Here's the Mutation track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_7gk8PlTVI

So yeah. ELEVEN songs. Although I do think that both of you should start with Hey! Hello! and only go back in time if you feel like it.

thanks for your efforts imago!

I liked plenty of what you posted. The early stuff sounds great but I really loved Deep In the Arms of Morpheus and a couple of the Hey Hello tracks. Not so much the badly recorded tracks although the grooves are there, just can't get with the recording technique.

I hear the similarities but feel like maybe where ginger leans pop devin leans to either metal or ambient? idk i like how both just do whatever they like and seem to be able to pull it off.

also started to dive into 'deconstruction' and man alive...

yeah that shit is properly crazy. 'the mighty masturbator' somehow hangs together as this monstrous & brilliant treatise on artistic existentialism while being a dance-metal-prog-tech freakout with fart noises and a big-top climax. it's so ambitious it's funny.

'addicted' might still be his best single album - it's between that, 'ocean machine' and 'terria' probz

glad you liked some of the ginger stuff! your likings essentially square with what i thought they would

lol spottie you inspired me to finally listen to deconstruction. i'm not really into the concept of complex devin at the expense of pop devin, but now i realize that's not really what's going on here.

i think i like it better than addicted, but then i think epicloud and sky blue are basically better versions of addicted

Ocean Machine: Biomech and Terria are both classics to me, particularly the former. Ziltoid is great for entertainment value!

whoa have you all heard the casualties of cool record? it's like what if devin was folk sade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muNLqPPTuDQ

was not expecting this. gorgeous. need to check this record now. so much devin the last couple weeks.

Listening to Terria now. The middle section from Deep Peace - Down Under is great.

terria's an unimpeachable masterpiece and i only like it slightly better than biomech

the closing three tracks might be better than those middle three. The guitar break right in the middle of tiny tears! beautiful track.

anyone else out there that makes swing metal like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rokLH-YRZ1g

I think this my favourite from Ocean Machine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj2EzOurU7Y

The funny slowed down voice on Olive from Terria still pops into my head once a month, 'stiiiiiir your driiiiink'

that is a lovely ocean machine choice, would be mine but for that closing triptych (the final final track doesn't count)

i also get 'oooollliiivvveesss' regularly in my head, although terria as a whole is best experienced in one go

"funeral" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It's also the perfect track to have on your headphones when on a cross trainer.

There's a peculiar production trick that DT employed a lot that I really love, tricks actually. He'll feed vocals (I think) through extremely long and smeary reverbs creating these wonderful, hazy sounding drone tracks that will often play out for the whole song, very cool, similarly there's often a lot of multitracked TV babble or vocal samples that seem to run in the background of some songs for their duration.

Not sure I could decide between Funeral and Bastard but yeah Hide Nowhere is great as well.

yeah he does some fun stuff with his production xp that makes everything he does sound like his own genre.

listening to 'the fluke' right now...like, fucking hell this is extraordinary music

he really does have his own kitchen-sink approach to pop-metal - it's kind of transcendent - has the zeal and brightness of a superchurch sermon but it's all on the side of good

def gonna be buying the live at royal albert hall blu ray when it comes out (soon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5_-Ky_bqgc
seems like a massive production. here he brings a ton of people and his kid on stage for the last triumphant finale.

ginger wildheart simply has his own northern-england-renegade echo of this ;)

xp

whoa, yeah. saw some of his live show on youtube - he writes unique ziltoid scripts tailored to the people of the uk! what a gent

his guitar tone is often so bodiless and so filled out by synths that there's this total airy and atmospheric quality to his stuff that's pretty singular. my college girlfriend got me into him and i just remember thinking i'd never heard anything seem simultaneously so calm and so constantly moving

kudos to my college girlfriend for being a total devy head and also being a generally awesome person

yeah it's kind of like shoegaze but more ecstatic, more skyborne - it is the light of beatification transmitted via the medium of heavy metal

it probably works in similar ways, emotionally, to pop music - albeit pop music surfing a sonic tsunami

so very otm

ALSO, he's a genuinely unreal vocalist. might be even more talented a vocalist than a guitarist even. although producer and arranger above all.

his vocal range is unreal. can't believe he's still letting those blood boiling screams out at his age

brad's college gf sounds cool

I'm old enough to recall the music press when he was Steve Vai's young kōhai for an album and tour. Not that I gave a shit about Vai's music, but i had a lot of guitarist mates.

I remember a pre-Terria intie Devin did for Lamentations of the Flame Princess zine (my copy of which disintegrated long ago) where he went on and on about how Terria was the result of all these new sounds he was hearing in his head and capturing on instruments thanks to some anti-dep or anti-bipolar meds he had begun taking in the preceding months. I think sobriety was a factor too iirc. You can tell his headspace is light years away from the relentlessness of the prior 3 albums.

Terria's def my 2nd fav behind Ocean Machine.

Also good to know I'm not the only mutterer of the "olives" stuff.

spending the morning listening to accelerated evolution which is just the best

wish we had enough people to do a devin trax poll.

imo we should all just compile ten-song ballots and post them here or something

Will yoooou saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave meeeeeeeeeeeee? *decending riff* ...baaaabe...baaaaaaaaaabe...baaaaaaaaaaaaaabe..

lets do it. might take me some time to decide my ten but its been fun w people calling out gems in the discography so far.

I will need to listen to about 7 albums - the only certainty is a #1 for The Mighty Masturbator, because it is everything I am

yeah i think if we're including syl and casualties of cool then i uh need to revisit several records

me 2. but looking forward to it.

honestly this is impossible. no. 1 would prob be "earth day" though

like earth day, funeral, kingdom, sunday afternoon, hyperdrive, the fluke, tiny tears uhhhh

jesus christ i forgot how much i loved alien

boo @ the ppl who hate alien upthread

listened to empath a few times over the last week and its really special. up there with his best.

<3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb935JynuhQ

he's posting a new song every day mon-fri during all this and calling it the quarantine project:

I will be releasing all the Quarantine Project songs on an album when all this calms down... until then, I’ll just keep posting stuff Monday to Friday. I hope it helps.

— Devin Townsend (@dvntownsend) March 27, 2020

i think theres 9 so far and its the usual mix of what you'd expect from him.

i was supposed to see him here in phx last week.

fao brad
https://youtu.be/wpjS7m6X4h4

lmao thank you

alright been trying to put my top ten together for a few years lol. decided to go with a top 25 instead cos why only ten anyway? in no order

deep peace
why?
suicide
stand
borderlands
kingdom
march of the poozers
funeral
bastard
spirits will collide
earth day
tiny tears
deadhead
failure
higher
from the heart
universal flame
regulator
singularity
seventh wave
dsiruptr
canada
terminal
depth charge
let it roll

you fuckin rule for this imo

it's fuckin' insane how much Devy I've heard which is still less than 50% of his catalog.

this thread might finally inspire me to fill in the gaps

Empath was the best satanic pop album the Beach Boys never made

i just keep playing the solo in deep peace over and over
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq-S9FzmcyI

not sure why i never posted in this thread. was massively into SYL and Devin's solo stuff up until around the self titled SYL and then just fell off the bus completely, not really sure why other than attention shifting. been going through ALL my cds from A-Z and have re-realised how much I love City, Ocean Machine and Infinity. travelled up to his show at the Astoria 2/Mean Fiddler in around 2003 and it was incredibly, notably due to Gene Hoglan drumming for all three bands that night - Zimmers Hole / Strapping Young Lad / Devin Townsend Project. amazing night.

so yes, i guess i'll carry on listening through the discography...and hoping I don't suddenly realise he got cancelled at some time in the last 19 years?

not to my knowledge he hasn't been. feel free to live review albums in here!

also occurred to me he's basically the metal Todd Rundgren?

yeah he seems like good people.

thought this might be a bump for his new album lightwork, which im still trying to figure out my feelings on.

rundgren comparison is good i think

I could also imagine a Devin/Andrew WK album that would be....very good indeed.

anyone dive into litghtwork yet?

it didn't do much for me the one time i heard it! some bangers obv. bonus disc far more unhinged

yeah disc 2 way more experimental. kinda hard not to think hes done better versions of each of these songs on past releases.

enjoyed dimensions, call of the void and equinox.

i don't think i could hear all this dude's music if I did nothing but listen to it for a year.

his quality control is pretty good though.

how does it compare to Empath?

it's considerably more mellow imo

I like mellow Devy tbh , i'll have to give it a listen

if i could like convince the guy to do a tour and perform Ocean Machine-Biomech in its entirety though i'd die happy

opening track super nice imo

Yah it’s frontloaded

off the back of relistening to everything/listening to the ones i didnt get to, i've been listening to the podcasts he did during lockdown, which are basically a chronological and very in depth look at each album. So far just up to terria but it's probably some of the most honest and self exposing autobio work i've heard from a musician. well worth checking out. first one here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2vpT_8zKp4

yeah those pods are very good... long tho.

I like the whole of Lightwork! really a great listen

if i could like convince the guy to do a tour and perform Ocean Machine-Biomech in its entirety though i'd die happy

https://www.discogs.com/master/1389963-Devin-Townsend-Project-Ocean-Machine-Live-At-The-Ancient-Roman-Theatre-Plovdiv

Haven't seen it myself, sort of took a Devin break for a few years, but I'm feeling the twitching. I'll have to check it out.
(And the end of the Live at the Royal Albert Hall show, the Ocean Machine triptych finale as it were, is mind blowing. I've never seen him live but I need to.)

I saw him on the metal cruise in 2020 and he played a wiiiide range of material but he stunned us with "All Hail the New Flesh" and "Detox" from City.