Devin Townsend is a musician, pure and simple. Be it with his soaring vocals, ethereal atmospheres, or crushing guitar, Devin's music positively bleeds emotion. Looking at Devin's impressive discography, it might be easy to assume that he's merely another one of those progressive metal titans who is way too in love with himself and always striving to reinvent the genre. However, Devin has said numerous times that he makes music for himself only, and honestly doesn't care what people think of it. Obviously, every musician under the sun has said that, but I get the feeling that Devin Townsend is one of the few that truly mean it. Over the course of his career, we have a pop-punk album, numerous industrial/death metal experiments, delightfully heavy pop rock, soft ambient, and even blues-based atmospheric country. While each of his albums are instantly recognizable as his work, each of his many projects takes on its own identity. For the purposes of this thread, we will be covering his solo work, so pretty much anything with the name Devin Townsend in it will be covered.
Teh list (Click the album link to magically warp to the first post of the discussion)
Ocean Machine: Biomech (1997)Infinity (1998)Physicist (2000)Terria (2001)Accelerated Evolution (2003)Synchestra (2006)Ziltoid the Omniscient (2007)Ki (2009)Addicted (2009)Deconstruction (2011)Ghost (2011)Epicloud (2012)Casualties of Cool (2014)Z2 (2014)So, without further ado, let's take a dive into the wonderfully lush world of Ocean Machine: Biomech.
Considered to be the "serious" component of Devin Townsend's music (the non-serious being Strapping Young Lad, which Townsend considered a parody), Ocean Machine: Biomech was constructed to be a vehicle for Devin's solo compositions. Though it was initially released under the Ocean Machine moniker, it was quickly reissued with Devin Townsend's name sloppily stamped above the original logo. Strapping Young Lad had already given many listeners an introduction to Townsend's penchant for walls of sound with literally no breathing space. In SYL's complex, visceral grind, the wall of sound complimented the chaotic nature of the music flawlessly. With the more subdued Ocean Machine album, we see the wall of sound manifested in a multitude of atmospheric layers. Simply put, there is always something else going on in the music other than what's at the forefront. Every verse, bridge, chorus on the album (barring the minimalist Death of Music) is stooped in layers of ambient pads and lush soundscapes. Much like the ocean itself, this album is DENSE. The resulting density makes repeated listens incredibly worthwhile, but first listens may be marred by mental overload from the listener. The songs are catchy, the riffs are heavy, and the atmospheric sections are quite relaxing, but it can be WAY too much to take on a first listen. As such, I don't usually recommend OM to many first-timers. This is an album that takes its time growing on the listener, gradually revealing all of its intricacies to only the most patient audience.
Now, with the pretentious intro out of the way, let's move on to my personal experiences with this album. This one took a REALLY long time to gel with me. I got into Devin with Addicted, Ziltoid, and SYL's The New Black, so the earlier material with all of the atmospheric bits and lighter tone was hard to swallow at first. Plus, whenever I tried to give it a listen, there was this harrowing atmosphere around it that just left me uncomfortable. Even the happier songs like Life and Hide Nowhere had me feeling odd. Something was just...off. Later, this atmosphere is what would make me consider OM a top 50 album. The fact that music could make me feel such an emotion was enough reason for me to keep at it. I had to find out why this album was disturbing me so much. It finally hit me on a drive home in the middle of the night. I paid full attention to the intricacies of the music. Every little detail jumped out to me with such clarity that I couldn't help but laugh. The bombast of Hide Nowhere worked perfectly alongside the dark, brooding Voices in the Fan. And the 3 song suite of Funeral, Bastard and The Death of Music is easily the most emotion-driven 30 minutes of music I have ever experienced. Every little section, from the choral outro to the previously mentioned Voices in the Fan, the blood-curdling scream that separates Bastard into its two sections, and the
other blood-curdling scream at the end of Things Beyond Things: Everything on this album was here for a reason. Nothing is out of place.
It's hard to look at this album and not see that it was clearly made by a bipolar personality. The album changes mood so frequently that it occasionally endangers the cohesion of the whole. Fortunately, the production style makes it so that even the relentlessly happy songs feel dark and oppressive. This album has been the soundtrack to many sessions of self-reflection. It's so easy to get lost in the layers and (pardon all the ocean parallels) drown in its beauty. Really, the entire album feels like drowning. It's overwhelming, and the mind wants to get out, but eventually the body just gives in and accepts its fate. Alright, I said I was done with pretentious analogies, but this album deserves them more than any other. This is a truly wonderful piece of art.
In 5 or 6 days we'll move on to the even more bipolar Infinity album.