Back from the deaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddddd.............
Okay so since Z
2's been out for almost two years, I feel like I can write about it with as little bias as possible now that my feelings about it have finally settled down, so here we go.
Before its release, Z
2 was subject to the highest level of hype I've ever witnessed for a new Devy album. And frankly, why the hell not? Ziltoid was single-handedly responsible for introducing a multitude of fans to the world of Townsend with its endlessly quotable dialogue and musical-like structure. While I don't really think Ziltoid holds up all that well today, it's still a fine album with a lot of nice songs, and the dialogue has actually aged better than the music (which seems backwards). People were fired up for more antics from the zany coffee-loving alien with more of the presumably psychotic music. I know my mental image of the Ziltoid portion of Z
2 was basically Deconstruction with less orchestration and more Ziltoid. Sounds great, bring it.
And then we found out it would be a double album! How could one possibly handle 2 discs full of Ziltoid? We wouldn't have to. Turned out, the first disc would be another album in the vein of Addicted and Epicloud. Definitely nothing wrong with that. It's a little weird that Devin was going to basically go back to back to back with similar stylistic inclination, but fine. We're all here for Ziltoid anyway, right?
So here we are. Z
2 is upon us. Split into two halves: A DTP album called Sky Blue and a Ziltoid album called Dark Matters (a song from Ghost, which always kind of bothered me because I'm petty). Not to speak for the whole group, but I feel like most people felt that Sky Blue didn't do enough to set itself apart from the previous 2 "catchy pop metal" albums, and the Ziltoid portion was just kind of a flop altogether. And honestly, it's kind of hard to disagree with that. I'm going to attempt to analyze it as a piece of the discography, while also attempting to explain why it may have been poorly received. We'll hit them both separately as they are very separate beasts.
To get my opinion out of the way first, I think Sky Blue is awesome. It's full of majestic, swooping brilliance with some real heaviness to back up the melodies. The atmosphere and "scope" of the thing is one area where it really succeeds. There are parts of Sky Blue that are absolutely monumental. The bridge of A New Reign gets stuck in my head constantly, Midnight Sun comes close to Synchestra territory, and Before We Die might be my favorite chorus in his entire line of work. Even the soft songs towards the end work a lot better than their counterparts from the past. Forever is much more memorable than a song like Divine. Having an interesting chord progression certainly helps. And I really love how it flows into Before We Die.
On the opposite side, I think Rain City is kind of a dud, which is a major bummer considering it takes up 8 minutes of the album's relatively short runtime. And I also think it flows like absolute piss. He stacked all the exciting, uptempo songs at the beginning, leaving the last four songs to plod along at practically the same tempo. Before We Die is plenty epic on its own, but imagine how much more impact it would have if Rain City was cut in half or didn't exist at all. Sky Blue was already at risk of becoming the forgotten
other half of Z
2, but its lack of album flow really cemented its permanent status as a collection of B-sides from Epicloud. And the actual collection of B-sides from Epicloud had better flow. Really weird.
Again, I love these songs. I think they suffer from an unfortunate release time. If these songs came out before Addicted or Epicloud they would probably be life-changing. But there's just nothing new or particularly exciting to a seasoned fan. Now for the really bad news. Remember earlier where I said Sky Blue might become the forgotten half of Z
2?
Man, what happened here? I think most people would agree this was actually a pretty colossal letdown. I tried to defend it as long as I could, but it's become apparent that Dark Matters just isn't that great. And when I think of Z
2, I think of Sky Blue. The alien doesn't even cross my mind. That's kind of terrifying. Let's be clear, I still like this album. Some of the songs are quite good. But if you treat this as a single entity without Sky Blue to prop it up, it rivals Physicist for its sheer mediocrity.
Treating this like a musical, there's usually a story component and a music component, and it's usually way too fucking long. Fortunately, Dark Matters is a rather brief one. The story tries really hard to capture the absurdism and charm of the first Ziltoid, but it feels like it's trying a bit too hard. It starts off fine; Ziltoid steals a child from a massively dangerous alien and causes universal war. Sweet. From Wandering Eye forward, everything gets really stupid. I mean, Ziltoid's story in the original was massively contrived and nonsensical, but at least it had the cop out of it being a dream at the end. Dark Matters has no such cop out. It resolves itself very haphazardly with more things that make zero sense (MY BROTHAAAAA). But that's fine, we're here for the music right?
Oh dear. The music's not very good either. Certainly not enough to make up for the lackluster story. Again, there are some serious bright spots. The trio of War Princess, Deathray, and March of the Poozers is awesome, heavy, and exactly what we've come to expect from a heavy Devin Townsend album in the 2010s. And these are the songs where the story is least cringe-inducing. The rest of it is very forgettable. The intro drags along with brief flashes of brilliance (the mid-section of Ziltoidian Empire). And everything after March of the Poozers is so riddled with dialogue that it's impossible for the music to get anything accomplished. You'd think this would be fixed by listening to the raw version with no dialogue, but it's still not anything amazing. Dimension Z is a fine enough closing hymn, but the damage is done by this point.
Alright, so why? There's nothing really inherently BAD about anything I've said above. It's still a Devin Townsend album with all the trademarks therein. And it's a sequel to an album about a coffee-addicted sock puppet. What were we expecting? Philosophic brilliance? A monumental epic for the ages?
Of course we were! Ziltoid's cult following has exploded to a point where there was no way anything could ever live up to it. It was absolutely perfect for what it was, and a sequel should have never happened. The story was tied up beautifully. It wasn't open for any kind of expansion, and it just didn't need it. I'm about to go into a pretty long, heady rant about why it fails, so if you're not interested in an essay on THE GREATER IMPLICATIONS OF ART IN THE 21ST CENTURY then skip the fuck ahead past these next 2 paragraphs.
Here's the thing about art. It's no longer about what's pretty or interesting to the general public. Visual art has long abandoned that concept, and we're getting there on music as well. The only way you can analyze art anymore is with the following question: "Does the artist achieve their goal?" Obviously, you have to understand what the artist's goal is first. And that's why modern art is lost on most people. The question has to morph from "What the holy shit am I looking at/listening to?" to "Why do I feel this way and why did the person that created this monstrosity WANT me to feel this way?" If we can't decipher the artist's goal, bad art. If we can decipher the artist's goal and don't perceive the intended effect, bad art. Z
2 falls into the latter category. The original Ziltoid had the benefit of a crucial artistic element: surprise. Ziltoid came out of nowhere. Devin's concept with Ziltoid was to do absolutely everything himself, and we got a cool story about an alien drinking coffee (which actually is a major allegory for the music industry and where Devin's live was at the time). He gave no shits and lived above Earth in a big rocketship. Goal achieved, brilliantly even. Ziltoid is in my bottom half of Devy albums, but it's still wonderful for what it is.
Now comes sequel-time! The kiss of perma-death for every art form. Now there's an expectation on both sides. Fans are expecting brilliance, and (warning I'm about to put words in the mouth of an artist which is bad but hear me out) Devin may well be expecting to be able to put out whatever he wants and have instant, permanent praise just for bearing the Ziltoid name. This rarely works out well. I'm not at all insinuating that Devy "phoned it in" or anything. I'm definitely insinuating that the expectations were completely unreachable. At the same time, there's quite a number of artistic missteps at play here. Dark Matters has barely any of the charm that made the original Ziltoid so great. And it has everything to do with the environment of its creation. ZTO was a very angry album. Devin was at wits end with having to do SYL even though he wasn't feeling the rage anymore, the DTB was permanently entrenched as SYL's little brother, and he was facing the crash that inevitably led to his sobriety. That's a lot of life happening all at once, and Ziltoid reflects it all perfectly. Things are a lot better now, which is great for him, but not so great for creating a sequel to an album that was made under drastically different circumstances. It's not Devin's fault in any way, shape, or form, but that's what happened. And the result is a pretty mediocre offering in a consistently excellent discography.
Wow, sorry about that. I really needed to let that out. Z
2 is a decent album let down by astronomical expectations and rather unfortunate timing. Both discs suffer from the "more of the same" disease and while many of the individual songs stand out, the flow is almost non-existent for both sides. It's very okay.
See you in another 2-ish years for Transcendence.
Topic: Re: Devin Townsend Discography v. 'Cause there is always time... (Read 52122 times)