Some people are to the music manor born, and Devin Townsend is certainly among that rarified elite. The British Columbia native played banjo at 5, guitar at 12 and joined a succession of high school Metal bands before recording under the Noisescapes banner in his early 20s.
His demo earned him a Relativity Records contract for his debut, Promise, and an introduction to Steve Vai, who invited Townsend to lend vocals to Vai’s Sex & Religion album. Townsend toured with Vai and subsequently with his opening act, The Wildhearts. He also formed a Thrash Metal trio dubbed IR8 with former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted and Exodus drummer Tom Hunting.
After being dropped by Relativity and rejected by Roadrunner, Townsend played session guitar for Industrial outfit Front Line Assembly, then signed a five-album deal with Century Media under the name Strapping Young Lad (to escape the preconceptions of his Vai association). Townsend’s first Strapping Young Lad album, Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, was almost completely a one-man project and was followed by the Punk/Metal parody/concept album Punky Brüster – Cooked on Phonics in 1996. Townsend formed an actual Strapping Young Lad band with previous musical companions and recorded 1997’s City, which remains an all-time favorite for many Metal connoisseurs.
For the next 11 years, Townsend ping-ponged between Strapping Young Lad and the Devin Townsend Band, first with separate sets within single shows and then with separate tours to spread out the incredible volume and breadth of material he was recording.
In 2004, Townsend stopped taking his bipolar medication and embarked on a series of Strapping Young Lad/Devin Townsend Band/solo recordings that embraced a broad spectrum of musical styles. But after 2006’s The Hummer, an Ambient album, and 2007’s completely solo Ziltoid the Omniscient, he announced the shuttering of both of his bands to spend time with his family. Townsend gave up smoking and alcohol and concentrated solely on production, then spent two years creating the basis for a proposed four-album series from his newly envisioned Devin Townsend Project. After completing the album arc in 2012 with the simultaneous releases of Ghost and Deconstruction, Townsend began work on what he described as “haunted Johnny Cash songs” with vocalist Ché Aimee Dorval under the name Casualties of Cool. He also ramped up a massively ambitious sequel to Ziltoid called Z2, which ultimately included the 2014 album, TV and radio components, a graphic novel and a live show.
And while he had planned to wrap up the Devin Townsend Project after its initial four-album run, the Project’s acclaimed seventh album,Transcendence, was released last fall.
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This article appears in May 10-17, 2017.
