Alright, a little behind on this. First off, I fucking LOVE Infinity, and sorry Justin, but I definitely prefer the version that was released. Bad Devil, Ants, Wild Colonial Boy and Noisy Pink Bubbles are all in my Top 5 of this album, so I don't think the album really wins by cutting them. Yes, it becomes a little... how to say this... uniform in sound (not to mean that it becomes monotonous, just that most of the songs now have, as you already stated, the serious vibe), but I find that the spastic nature of this album serves it really well, and it does a great job of reflecting Devin's bi-polarity - something that gets a little lost on the more serious version, I find. That said, it's a shame that Starchild Rise and Om aren't on the album, as they are completely stellar tracks. I don't care much for Processional, due to its very meandering nature.
I have to quickly talk about a few songs here. Number one: Bad Devil. As some of you might know, I really really love DSO, and the fact that Devin did their style ten years earlier is mind-boggling. Now, there are a few DSO songs that execute the swing-metal formula a little better than Bad Devil (though they have the unfair advantage of having the possibility of wacky vocal trade-offs), like the opening trio on Sing-Along Songs for the Damned and Delirious, but Bad Devil is still a) awesome b) fun and c) one of the first Devin Townsend songs that I liked, so it will always receive buckets of love from me.
Number two: Ants. I recognise that this might not be the favourite of a lot of people, but this song was THE song that accompanied me during my work-out program in 12th grade. Basically, I had this thing with my roommate that we would put on Ants (the intensity of it is perfect for something like this, as is the short length) and then just force ourselves to do proper push-ups as fast as we could for the whole duration of the song. Now, he always won, since he's always been a really athletic guy and I was pretty unfit for most of my school days, but that's not the point. The point is that I will always associate Ants with the period during which I got really serious about the shape I was in and the time I started getting fit. Plus, the fact that during all of this time, I never got tired of the song means that it's an awesome song in its own right.
Number three: War. This one was, at least for me, a slow burner. For a long long long time I found it meandering, boring and the only flaw on this album. Now I don't know what it was that brought it on, actually, but one day I just sat down with the whole album and really LISTENED and War hit me like nothing ever before. I've heard it described as "Broadway on crack" and that works pretty well - it's grand, it's brooding, it's insane and (now) I love it to bits. Beside the fact that it's now one of my favourites on the album, War will always - well, maybe not always, but I suspect for quite a while still - be the song I associate with the fact of just how much a dedicated listen can help you appreciate something, be it a song, an album or an artist.
Also, Justin, you're dead wrong, because Terria makes Ocean Machine its bitch. And since hef is a man of impeccable taste...
Topic: Re: Devin Townsend Discography v. 'Cause there is always time... (Read 52103 times)