Strapping Young Lad - CityReleased February 11, 1997
Tracklisting:
1. Velvet Kevorkian
2. All Hail the New Flesh
3. Oh My Fucking God
4. Detox
5. Home Nucleonics
6. AAA
7. Underneath the Waves
8. Room 429 (Cop Shoot Cop cover)
9. SpiritualityBonus Tracks:
10. Centipede (2007 Remaster Bonus Track)
11. Home Nucleonics (2007 Remaster Bonus Track)
12. Headrhoid (“Gunt” Demo) [2007 Remaster Bonus Track]
13. Detox (‘96 Demo) [2007 Remaster Bonus Track]
14. AAA (‘96 Demo) [2007 Remaster Bonus Track]Personnel:
Devin Townsend - Guitar, Vocals
Jed Simon - Guitar
Byron Stroud - Bass
Gene Hoglan - Drums
Additional Personnel:
Chris Valagao - Vocals
Tanya Evans - Vocals
As Dev was putting together Ocean Machine, Century Media wanted a follow-up to Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing. He put Ocean Machine on hold and moved back to LA, living with Borivoj Krgen and working in the mail room at Century Media. He hoped to immerse himself in the anger he felt from his previous time living in LA during his time with Vai, and focus that anger on writing the next SYL album, which would become City.
By this point Mike Sudar and Ashley Scribner had moved onto to other projects, and drummer Adrian White didn’t connect with the material Dev was writing. Jed Simon was still on board, but Dev had to find a new drummer and bassist. He was introduced to Gene Hoglan through a mutual friend at an Iron Maiden concert. Gene was a fan of the first SYL record and Dev asked him on the spot if he’d play on the second record. Gene agreed to do it. Dev called up his former Caustic Thought bandmate, Byron Stroud, and got him to join the band on bass. This would be the lineup for the rest of SYL’s career.
With the new lineup complete, the band met up at Steve Vai’s Mothership Studios, where Sex and Religion was recorded. Dev and Steve had stayed in loose contact here and there since the Vai band ended, and Steve felt bad about how that project fell apart and wanted to try to patch up the relationship. He let SYL use his studio and even allowed them to sleep there. The album was mostly written by Dev, with Gene co-writing the drums to Oh My Fucking God. The album was recorded very quickly, and released in February 1997.
City could be considered the real beginning of Strapping Young Lad. The songs feel more focused and the production is much better than Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing. Each song has its own identity, whereas most of HAARHT just blends together as an industrial grindcore mush. Even the anger feels more genuine on City. This album is pure chaos…and I love it. I don’t dabble much in extreme metal, but there’s a certain beauty to the madness of this album.
Velvet Kevorkian is a rework of the first half of SunMud/Woman, from the Ass-Sordid Demos.
Oh My Fucking God was co-written with Gene Hoglan.
Detox is a rare Dev song written in Drop D tuning (DADGBE). The song is about how Dev felt during a night on the town with The Wildhearts during his brief time in the band.
A music video was filmed for Detox:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f20L0msLsMAAA was written in a weird guitar tuning: AAAEAE. Dev would use this tuning again heavily on Physicist.
Room 429 is a cover of a song by Cop Shoot Cop, one of Dev’s favorite bands.
Spirituality is the only clunker on this album. It kinda drags and I have to be in the right mood to listen to it.
The bonus tracks are there if you’re into that sort of thing. I think Centipede has cool groove. Nothing else really sticks out to me.
City received high praise from metal publications like Kerrang! and Metal Hammer, and the band started gaining a real fanbase. The band, accompanied by John Morgan on keyboards, toured through 1997 in North America, Europe, and Australia.
Here's some videos from that tour
Sauget, IL 8/13/97:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_pvVWeVO_8Albany, NY 8/30/97:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD3aRQqaVSsAtlanta, GA 9/6/97:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_AGVF5YuSPKf1tLabRQjCJwryXlp6LniThe last show of ’97, in Melbourne, was recorded for a live album…
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Strapping Young Lad - No Sleep ‘Till Bedtime: Live in Australia Recorded October 12, 1997, Released June 2, 1998
Tracklisting:
1. Velvet Kevorkian (Live)
2. All Hail the New Flesh (Live)
3. Home Nucleonics (Live)
4. Oh My Fucking God (Live)
5. S.Y.L. (Live)
6. In the Rainy Season (Live)
7. Far Beyond Metal (Live)
8. Japan
9. CentipedeBonus Tracks:
10. Home Nucleonics (‘96 Demo) [Japanese Bonus Track]
11. Headrhoid (“Gunt” Demo) [Japanese Bonus Track]
12. Detox (‘96 Demo) [Japanese Bonus Track]
13. AAA (‘96 Demo) [Japanese Bonus Track]Additional Personnel:
John Morgan - Keyboards
Not much to say about this live album. It’s a solid performance. It contains the song Far Beyond Metal, which was written around this time but wouldn’t appear on a studio album until SYL’s final album, The New Black. No Sleep has the same bonus tracks as City.
Here’s some (very low quality) footage of that show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR_WTm4b5ZAThe band continued to tour in 1998, hitting Europe, Australia, and Japan.
Some footage from a show in Kawasaki, Japan 10/20/98:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QVbZGXlB-sWith the release of City, Strapping Young Lad was now a force to be reckoned with. Dev thinks of City as the “ultimate” SYL album. But, as stated previously, SYL was never intended to be his main gig. And the exaggerated metal persona he displayed onstage with the band wasn’t an accurate representation of himself, and he got tired of playing that character, so to speak. This, combined with his mental health struggles, which I’ll cover in a later update (That one’s gonna be a doozy…), eventually led to Dev putting SYL on hiatus in 1998, so that he could focus on his solo work.
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Decided to drop this one a bit early since conversation had died down. I also went back and added some more photos to the previous posts.