devin townsend c/d

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

i always want to like ki when i revisit it but it's just.... strange and unavailable. i think townsend was trying to make an expansive record like terria but in a different way. unfortunately it mostly sounds like a stoner metal record without distortion

i like "gato" still

actually i meant "heaven send" which is a better "gato." what a weird record

Ki's the only DT record I could probably stomach any more, tbh. Far as I remember the title track's pretty great.

I'm not going to badmouth the guy but a couple of years ago very suddenly I simply stopped enjoying his music. It's weird. Unfortunately though the way my tastes have shifted I've increasingly found some major aspects of his whole "thing" unpalatable (overly compressed shiny production, goofy attempts at humour...)

Not going to rule out coming back round to him in time though.

the title track of ki is great!

probably the best thing i've discovered in exhaustively listening to his discography this time around is epiclouder, the bonus disc for epicloud. those uh demos are amazing!

Ki's the only DT record I could probably stomach any more, tbh. Far as I remember the title track's pretty great.

I'm not going to badmouth the guy but a couple of years ago very suddenly I simply stopped enjoying his music. It's weird. Unfortunately though the way my tastes have shifted I've increasingly found some major aspects of his whole "thing" unpalatable (overly compressed shiny production, goofy attempts at humour...)

Not going to rule out coming back round to him in time though.

― ultros ultros-ghali, Wednesday, September 9, 2015 6:08 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Feel like I could see this happening with me every few years with him, but it hasn't happened yet. Ive always kinda stayed at arms length from his music with only a true deep dive over the last few months.

i think this is my top ten

Earth Day
Kingdom
Funeral
Hyperdrive
Shine
The Fluke
Zen
Slow Me Down
Planet Rain
Tiny Tears

and bc that feels really cruel here's the following ten

Regulator
Storm
Happy Birthday
Ki
Bastard
Far Beyond Metal
Midnight Sun
Stagnant
The Mighty Masturbator
Vampira

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.