A conversation with Devin Townsend is probably what anyone even peripherally acquainted with his diverse discography would expect. Full of unyielding introspection and references to cheeseburgers, sock puppets and coffee, it’s an impossible task to even loosely label the musician.
With a career that began under the wing of veteran American guitarist Steve Vai at the age of 19, Townsend’s extreme metal outfit Strapping Young Lad stoked the dormant anger of young men and crowned him the “mad scientist of metal”.
Such a categorisation is an affliction on the singer today who, at 41 years of age, is in a “much quieter and darker” place and frustrated by the expectations of the Strapping legacy.
“Young people don’t recognise that how you articulate your anger when you’re older is gonna come across very differently than when you’re 20. I get so irritated by people going ‘do this again’, and I say ‘I can’t’ – and they say, ‘yes, you can do it again’. It doesn’t exist, in that form, anymore – I can’t be any more clear about it”, he explains over the phone from a sweltering Vancouver.
“But then, you have bands who spend entire careers refining what they do so it becomes just a more clever or deeper version of what they originally stated.
“That’s not what I do. Everything that I do is just a moment of representation of a frame of mind that I found myself in”, he continues intensely.
Townsend is currently mixing his latest record, Casualties Of Cool, which has taken three years to come into fruition. The album eventuated so organically, deliberated upon while refining previous efforts Deconstruction and Epicloud, that he is characteristically nervous about its reception. However, the chameleon seems excited about the refreshingly novel terrain the record enters – which he described on Twitter recently as “sweet, sweet, dark and quiet”.
“I get so irritated by people going ‘do this again’, and I say ‘I can’t’ – and they say, ‘yes, you can do it again’. It doesn’t exist, in that form, anymore. ““Fans can expect to put it on and go, ‘what the fuck?’ I wrote a bunch of songs in my living room and they’re not desperate for your attention, which is a first for me.
“Everything you usually hear from me is just screaming at you to pay attention, and this isn’t. And I love it as a result. It breaks my heart to actually hear something that isn’t like, ‘PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO ME!’” the singer laughs.
It is indeed hard to envision a Devin Townsend Project record that is not a commanding force. The original four records in the project – Ki, Addicted!, Deconstruction and Ghost are intriguing materials based alone on their polarising distinctions.
The DTP exercise so far is a schizophrenic cross-section between progressive and heavy, reserved and soothing.
If only one certainty could be postulated about Townsend’s exhaustingly versatile work over the last two decades, it is his unwavering capacity to remain true to himself.
“There’s a certain element of the audience that get super into what I do, you know more so than in some cases is healthy, right. And I think that when people have an emotional investment in something, they’re often going to want that, again, and again and again,” the accommodating singer offers.
“A lot of what I have been trying to represent with my career over the past 20 years is the fact that what I will give you again, and again and again is just me being honest about what I’m doing.”
The overriding sentiment evident during a chat with Townsend is his almost dogmatic commitment to artistic purity.
He possesses a prolific history of collaboration, most notably on 2011’s Deconstruction, which featured vocalists Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth), Joe Duplantier (Gojira) and Greg Puciato (Dillinger Escape Plan).
But even this exercise is compromised for Townsend, whose recent collaboration with Serj Tankian (System of a Down) and European metaller Ihsahn, the charity song “We Are”, felt “forced”.
“That was a weird thing for me. I don’t like being forced to collaborate, you know. It’s only recently that I found myself in a bunch of collaborative positions that weren’t collaborative at all, where it’s like – here’s a bunch of music you don’t understand, and here’s your section. I’ve got no disrespect for anything I’ve done, but I’ve realised lately I have to put an end to a lot of it, right”.
Townsend’s tone immediately changes when asked about “Of Blood And Salt”, a 2011 song that he recorded with French metal demigods Gojira.
“I’m just so fucking insecure. But the benefit of being a cat that intellectualises this stuff, is that I’m proactive right – at changing it.”“Oh yeah! I mean something like that is great, because I love Joe, you know, I’d do anything for that guy. He sang on Deconstruction, and I was like, I’ll do anything for you man, I love your band, I love you,” he says.
The Townsend method implies a lack of control. The musician follows his artistic intuition so normatively, he feels ambivalent when receiving positive appraisals. He describes fan meet and greets as “both difficult and flattering”. The upcoming Australian tour in October features such meetings.
“My connection to music is not that I write music, it’s that it happens as a result of me being me. So when people have an emotional investment in it and attribute that to me, I find that very uncomfortable. However, if I was in their position and there was something that had affected me emotionally, if the people who were the object of that were nonchalant about it, it would be very hurtful to me,” he concedes.
The 41- year- old’s palpable discomfort with expectations even affects his business models. Casualties of Cool currently does not have a label, and Townsend is resigning himself to the fact that he will likely rely on crowd funding to properly release the album.
Accepting that reality has been a conscious effort, and testifies to Townsend’s self-awareness – a personality trait that is loudly embedded in his work.
“I’m just so fucking insecure. But the benefit of being a cat that intellectualises this stuff, is that I’m proactive right – at changing it.”
Devin Townsend Australian Tour 2013
TICKETS ON SALE THURSDAY 27 JUNE, 9AM LOCAL
THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER
BRISBANE, THE AUDITORIUM – All Ages
www.oztix.com.au
FRIDAY 11 OCTOBER
SYDNEY, THE METRO – Licensed All Ages
www.ticketek.com.au
SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER
MELBOURNE, THE PALACE – 18+
www.oztix.com.au / www.ticketek.com.au
TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER
PERTH, METROPOLIS FREMANTLE – 18+
www.oztix.com.au
