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| Name | Devin Townsend |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Devin Garret Townsend |
| Born | May 05, 1972 New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada |
| Instrument | Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, drum programming |
| Genre | Progressive metal, progressive rock, extreme metal, industrial metal, thrash metal, experimental metal, ambient |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter, musician, producer |
| Years active | 1993–present |
| Label | HevyDevy, Century Media |
| Associated acts | The Devin Townsend Band, The Devin Townsend Project, Strapping Young Lad, Steve Vai, Punky Brüster, IR8, Front Line Assembly, Grey Skies, Caustic Thought, Noisescapes, Ayreon |
| Url | www.hevydevy.com |
| Notable instruments | Peavey, ESP, Fender, and Gibson |
Devin Garret Townsend (born May 5, 1972) is a Canadian musician and record producer. He was the founder, songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist in extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad from 1994 to 2006 and has had an extensive career as a solo artist.
After performing in a number of metal bands in high school, Townsend was discovered by a record label in 1993 and was asked to perform lead vocals on Steve Vai's album Sex & Religion. After recording and touring with Vai, Townsend was discouraged by what he found in the music industry, and vented his anger on a solo album released under the pseudonym Strapping Young Lad. He soon assembled a band under the name, and released the critically acclaimed City in 1997. Since then, he has released three more albums with Strapping Young Lad, along with solo material released under his own independent record label, HevyDevy Records. Townsend's solo albums, a diverse mix of hard rock and progressive metal, have featured a varying lineup of supporting musicians. In 2002 he formed The Devin Townsend Band, a dedicated lineup which recorded and toured for two of his solo releases.
In 2007, Townsend disbanded both Strapping Young Lad and The Devin Townsend Band, taking a break from touring to spend more time with his family. After a two-year hiatus, he began work on a four-album series called The Devin Townsend Project, with each album written in a different style. The first two entries in the series, Ki and Addicted, were released in 2009. Townsend has scheduled tours throughout Australia and North America in 2010 in support of the albums, and plans to release the next two, Deconstruction and Ghost, in 2011.
Townsend's trademark production style, featuring a heavily multitracked wall of sound, has been compared to the styles of Phil Spector and Frank Zappa. His versatile vocal delivery ranges from screaming to an opera-esque singing, and his songwriting is similarly diverse. Townsend's musical style is rooted in metal, and his albums are written to express different aspects of his personality.
Townsend recorded a Noisescapes demo and sent copies to various record labels. Relativity Records responded to Townsend with a record deal and Townsend began work on what was to be the first Noisescapes album, Promise. Townsend soon landed a second touring gig, this time with the opening band of Vai's tour, The Wildhearts. He played live with the band throughout half of 1994 in Europe, and appeared as a guest musician on their single Urge. Ginger, the band's frontman, remained close friends with Townsend, later co-writing several songs on Infinity and the Christeen + 4 Demos EP.
While on tour with The Wildhearts, Townsend formed a short-lived thrash metal project with Metallica's then-bassist Jason Newsted. The band, known as IR8, featured Newsted on vocals and bass, Townsend on guitar, and Tom Hunting of Exodus on drums. The group recorded a few songs together, although Townsend says that they never intended to go further than that. "People heard about it and thought we wanted to put out a CD, which is absolutely not true," he explains. "People took this project way too seriously." "I have a hunch they only offered me a deal to get me to sing with Steve," he mused.
In 1994, Century Media Records offered Townsend a contract to make "some extreme albums". and began to record material under the pseudonym Strapping Young Lad. Townsend avoided using his real name at this point in career, looking for a fresh start after his high-profile Vai gig. "At the beginning, I wanted to avoid at all cost to use my name because I was known as the singer for Steve Vai and it wasn't the best publicity to have," he later explained. "I was playing somebody else's music and I was judged in respect to that music." with Metal Maniacs calling it "groundbreaking" and Revolver naming it "one of the greatest metal albums of all time". Townsend himself considers it the band's "ultimate" album. Later that year, Townsend released his first solo album, . The album featured a mix of hard rock, ambient, and progressive rock. After being discharged from the hospital, Townsend found that "everything just clicked" and he was able to write his second solo album, Infinity, which he described as "the parent project" of City and Biomech,
With Infinity, Townsend began to label all albums outside of Strapping Young Lad under his own name, dropping the Ocean Machine moniker, to reduce confusion. He wanted to show that despite the highly varied nature of his projects, they are all simply aspects of his identity. The album Biomech was relabeled and redistributed as Ocean Machine: Biomech, under Townsend's name, to reflect the new arrangement. Townsend's bandmates began to play two sets at their shows, one as Strapping Young Lad, and one as The Devin Townsend Band, playing songs from Townsend's solo albums. With the project stalled, Townsend instead wrote the album himself, entitling it Physicist. Townsend assembled his Strapping Young Lad bandmates to record it, the only time this lineup was featured on a Devin Townsend album. and Townsend considers it his worst album to date.
Feeling he had "ostracized a bunch of fans" with Physicist, Townsend felt he had the chance to make a more personal and honest record. He produced and recorded Terria, a "highly illustrated stream-of-consciousness" album, and more reminiscent of death metal, with a "larger-than-life" rock production style. but it was the band's first charting album, entering at 97th place on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart.
While Strapping Young Lad was being reunited, Townsend formed a new, permanent band "on par with Strapping" to record and tour for his solo releases. Accelerated Evolution, named for the pace of putting a new band together in under a year, After the release of Accelerated Evolution, Townsend's two bands toured separately for their separate albums.
Strapping Young Lad began working on their next album, Alien, in March 2004. Feeling that the band's previous album did not live up to expectations, Townsend decided to take his music to a new extreme. To prepare for the new album, Townsend stopped taking the medication prescribed to treat his bipolar disorder. "I think that as an artist, in order for me to get to the next plateau, I kind of feel the need to explore things and sometimes that exploration leads you to places that are a little crazy," he explains. "And Alien was no exception with that." it was well received on its release, selling 3,697 copies in its first week and appearing on several Billboard charts.
Shortly thereafter Townsend began putting together the next Devin Townsend Band record, with the working title Human. Townsend intended the album as the more "pleasant" counterpart to Alien. "It's basically a record about coming back down to earth after being in space with Alien for a while." The album ended up being renamed Synchestra and was released in January 2006. Townsend showcased a wide variety of musical styles in Synchestra, blending his trademark "pop metal" with influences from folk, polka, and Middle Eastern music. Around this time, Townsend withdrew from touring to spend time with his family. From home, Townsend completed his second solo ambient album, The Hummer, releasing it exclusively on his website in November 2006.
In May 2007, Townsend released Ziltoid the Omniscient, a tongue-in-cheek rock opera about the eponymous fictional alien. Townsend recorded the album alone in its entirety; he utilized Drumkit from Hell , a software drum machine that uses sounds and MIDI played by Tomas Haake of Meshuggah. Shortly after the album's release, Townsend announced that he no longer planned to tour or make albums with Strapping Young Lad or The Devin Townsend Band. He explained that he was "burnt out on travelling, touring, and self promotion" and wished to do production work, write albums, and spend time with his family without the stress of interviews or touring.
In 2008, Townsend lent his voice to characters in several episodes of the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse (see Musician cameos in Metalocalypse for more). The original character design for Pickles the Drummer, one of the series' main characters, bore a striking resemblance to Townsend. The series' co-creator Brendan Small acknowledged the similarity, and altered the design before the series began. "We made sure he didn't look like Devin Townsend. We gave him the goatee and the dreadover so he wouldn't look like that."
Over two years, Townsend wrote over 60 songs, and found that they fit into "four distinct styles". After Ki, Townsend released a "commercial, yet heavy" album called Addicted, released in November 2009, which will be followed by the "chaotic" Deconstruction which represents what Townsend "was trying to achieve with Strapping Young Lad."
Townsend returned to the stage in January 2010, touring North America with headliner Between the Buried and Me as well as Cynic and Scale the Summit. This was followed by a headlining tour in Australia and a series of high-profile shows in Europe. He is currently in talks to begin a North American headlining tour beginning in October 2010.
Townsend has also revealed his plans to release another new album Z2, which will be the sequel to his previous album Ziltoid the Omniscient, released in 2007. He has stated that Z2 will be "a full blown musical". He plans to start recording it after he has finished the Devin Townsend Project albums. Townsend is also planning on releasing a graphic novel based on the Ziltoid character and possibly performing the Ziltoid album as a staged musical, at least as a one-off.
;Solo albums {|class="wikitable" ! Title ! Release date ! Label |- | | July 21, 1997 | rowspan="11"| HevyDevy |- | Infinity | rowspan="1"| June 17, 1998 |- | Physicist | rowspan="1"| June 26, 2000 |- | Terria | rowspan="1"| November 6, 2001 |- | Accelerated Evolution | rowspan="1"| March 31, 2003 |- | Devlab | rowspan="1"| December 4, 2004 |- | Synchestra | rowspan="1"| January 30, 2006 |- | The Hummer | rowspan="1"| November 15, 2006 |- | Ziltoid the Omniscient | rowspan="1"| May 27, 2007 |- | Ki | rowspan="1"| May 22, 2009 |- | Addicted | rowspan="1"| November 17, 2009 |}
;Strapping Young Lad {|class="wikitable" ! Title ! Release date ! Label |- | Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing | April 4, 1995 | rowspan="5"| Century Media |- | City | February 11, 1997 |- | Strapping Young Lad | February 11, 2003 |- | Alien | March 22, 2005 |- | The New Black | July 11, 2006 |- |}
Category:1972 births Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Ableton Live users Category:Canadian rock guitarists Category:Canadian rock singers Category:Canadian record producers Category:Canadian singer-songwriters Category:Canadian people of English descent Category:Living people Category:People from Vancouver Category:People with bipolar disorder Category:Canadian multi-instrumentalists Category:People from New Westminster Category:Progressive metal guitarists
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