DEVIN TOWNSEND -

DEVIN TOWNSEND - "I’ll Show You How Crazy I Can Be When I’m Sober, And It’s Incredibly Over-The-Top"






BW&BK scribe Carl Begai recently caught up with Devin Townsend to discuss his new album, Ki, his motivations behind it and the three albums due to follow it this year, and the death of STRAPPING YOUNG LAD. An excerpt is available below.

“When I quit smoking weed I realized that a lot of my paranoia ended up in my music" says Townsend. "I realized that a lot of the bombast… the music just demands your attention, and my lattention as an adult now is demanded in so many different directions that when I listen to music I don’t listen to Meshuggah or Opeth anymore. I don’t listen to heavy music because every time it comes on it’s like ‘Quit fucking yelling at me. There’s so much shit in my life that the last thing I need is for you to try and convince me of something.’ There are always going to be one or two people saying ‘You’re full of shit, that’s not you.’ Like going on tour with Strapping; we’d do the Download Festival and I’d be up there projecting myself like Zeus or a fourth dimensional alien (laughs), and then I’d go home to my parents and it’d be like ‘Hi Devy, here’s your favourite blanket…’ I realized I’m not that guy on stage. On some level, of course I’m that guy, but the decision I had to make was whether it was a projection of truly me. That’s why I put Strapping aside. I saw that if it truly me being afraid and trying to fit in, not only am I being untrue to myself, I’m posing to everybody. The only heavy music that I respond to come from people that mean it, and if I’m up there posing for somebody that’s not heavy music to me. That’s a fucking commodity.”

“When we did Ozzfest I remember thinking that Strapping Young Lad started as the middle finger, and then suddenly there were people saying ‘Yeah! Tell us we’re assholes!’ I wrote The New Black about that, about the parody of ít, because that was the only thing I could get behind in terms of what Strapping had left for me at that point. I made a record that was supposed to be this larger than life Biggest Band In The World record, so when we did all those big shows it was part of the whole game. That’s why when Ziltoid came out a lot of people we like ‘How dare you expose that?’”

“What made City such a great record in my opinion also made Terria a great record and Ki a great record. I’m being honest. If I tried to continue Strapping, what would I sing about? Hey, I’m a fraud! I actually really like Enya! Let’s rock! So that’s what this four record process is about. What you want from me is crazy music? I’ll show you how crazy I can be when I’m sober, and it’s incredibly over-the-top.”

Go to this location for the complete in-depth interview.

DEVIN TOWNSEND - "I'm Predisposed To Complicated Music, Absolutely"

Ex-STRAPPING YOUNG LAD frontman Devin Townsend discusses his new album, Ki, in an interview with Sea Of Tranquility. An excerpt is available below.

SoT: Do you resent the role drugs have (previously) played in your creative process?

Devin: "I don't think I have enough energy to resent it in all honesty. I'm happy with the person that I am and I definitely feel accountable for everything that I've done in the past, but I can't spend much time regretting anything. There have been some interviews that I've done in the past where people are talking about Strapping Young Lad and my reasons for not continuing that. I have very acceptable reasons in my own life, but they always say 'Oh you must be angry at the past' or 'You must be angry about this and that' and I'm thinking hey you make your own bed you know? As a result of that, spending too much time being angry about it is a waste of energy, energy that I could currently put into making music, which again clarifies and says well absolutely I may have used these directions before, based on me duping myself in a lot of ways. However, if I just left it at that it would be this open ended thing. I'm using this opportunity with this DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT and these four records, to be able to say here's one record like this record, but clear, here's one record like that record, clear. Hopefully what it will do, not necessarily for the audiences' benefit, but for my own, will be to prove to myself that yeah of course I'm predisposed to complicated music, absolutely, but there's no real reason for you to mix the idea of that sort of drug induced paranoia into it. What that is doing is making you afraid of your own creative outlet, because it's mixed with something that is synthetic. So the third record Deconstruction is basically one of the most complicated and chaotic things I've ever done, but it has a lot of control to it. Thematically it's based around what your need is to embrace that chaos. Why are humans so enraptured by heaviness and chaos? I think the answer to that might be a lot simpler and more embarrassing than a lot of us think."

Click here for the complete interview.

Go to this location for BW&BK's recent in-depth interview with Townsend.