#28: Devin Townsend Project - DeconstructionHelp, I just can't stop putting Devin on my list. Probably because he's got so much music and so much of it is fantastic. Take for example, Deconstruction. It's loud, it's heavy, and it's glorious. Every song here is great, some of them rank among my favorites in Devin's entire discography. This is easily the most complex and technical of all the albums Devin's put off, but it's put towards the right things; namely, writing tons of great riffs and hooks, writing songs that have lots to them but flow well along the way.
Not all the songs are massive epics, though; Praise the Lowered and Juular are two early, simple tracks, and both serve their purposes well; Praise the Lowered is a warmup to the album, a light track the builds to a crushing riff by the end, and Juular is a burst of energy after the two slower songs before, loud and in your face. Pandemic and Poltergeist are two shorter songs towards the end of the album, and both are great heavy tracks, but probably among my least favorite from the album - which is to say, good but not great. And Sumeria, directly in the center of the album, is just wonderful. This is the heavy I want to hear. This is a glorious wall of sound and a tightly-written track that never loses its momentum. The way the song cuts from loud to soft near the end also works surprisingly well and makes a great transition to the next track.
And then we have to talk about the longer tracks. Stand is one long big buildup with a pounding beat throughout the entire song, and it takes its time but doesn't ever feel overlong, I can't help but love this one the most of the entire album, honestly. Planet of the Apes has a bit of a clumsy start but builds into a chaotic mess that's just pure pleasure. If Stand is my favorite song on the album, the last third or so of Planet of the Apes is my favorite segment, no contest. The Mighty Masturbator is the epic of the album, the longest track on any of Devin's albums too I think, and it's... well, it suffers in the same way Anesthetize does for me, in that a lot of the sections don't really flow well between each other, but all the sections here are great on their own. And Deconstruction is about as disorganized of a song as I'll ever here, but it works, somehow. It hates revisiting any past ideas and there's so much jam-packed into under 10 minutes it's baffling it does work so well, but none of the transitions are too rough and all the different ideas are great.
If I would complain a little, I think Devin's humor does miss the mark here for me. I could do without the farting, thank you. It's a bit of a stain on an otherwise fantastic album, and yeah the humor is probably what knocks this down from being in or near the top 20 to barely top 30, I can't really get past that easily. But aside from that? One of the best albums Devin's ever put out.
Topic: Parama's Accidental Top 50 Albums List! (Current: #1) (Read 26971 times)
