MetalSucks

Photos by Adam Haussman

My bosses at MetalSucks love me for my looks, but by now Vince (pictured here) and Axl (here) know that my dazzling physical gifts are accompanied by a lot of blown deadlines and indecipherable twaddle about the band Junkyard and drugs. To compensate, I help out with dropped assignments and try to do a really super job on the big stories that fall to the MS L.A. Bureau. Well I direct your attention to the word try in the previous sentence cuz for the last month or so [Seven weeks, Anso. But who's counting. -Ed.], I have been failing to produce even a coherent thought about the Between The Buried and Me/Cynic/Devin Townsend show back in January. I got zilch.

But it’s not my fucking fault. Stupid tour. It was too good.

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In no particular order…

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Gene Hoglan: The Atomic Clock. What he can do to an otherwise ordinary or bland riff is beyond explanation. He is an ARTIST first, world’s greatest metal drummer second. Plus… confidence and a circular groove. How many times while writing with a drummer have you heard them say “There should be no drums there, it’s what the song wants”… Never?

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These are some of my favorite producers and mixers for heavy music… It’s a challenging genre, and these guys are great in my opinion.

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Just a question, not meaning to be a presumptuous dick or anything, but seriously… as metal heads, who are we pissed at? I hear a lot about “God” or “Satan,” but I’m kind of of the mindset that both of those things are illusions and metaphors based on a prehistoric view on what the true nature of infinite reality is. So does that mean we’re mad at ourselves ultimately?

Maybe we’re all mad at our dads?

Money? Sex? Each other? “The man?” That man over there? Me? Her? Stupid people? Drugs? Our own stupidity? Aardvarks?

Maybe as entities we are predisposed to aggression and evolutionarily, we’re hung up on the need to actualize it.

Either way, right or wrong… rawwwr, no?

-DT

Ah, shit I know… but late at night, I love watching this type of stuff… Lame? Most definitely. But I never claim to be otherwise.

“Farting Preacher”

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Okay. I started SYL in 1993 after hearing Soul Of A New Machine. I saw Fear Factory open for Sepultura with Clutch, and I remember running around the venue telling everyone: “THAT is what I want to do, except with extra chaos…”

My creative process is directly tied to my emotional development. There are some folks that make music by picking up a guitar until they have a riff that is defined by the musical roads they choose to hone. They then sculpt it into that framework and voila, Metallica, Slayer, Priest etc. I think that’s awesome, and in some ways I’m envious of that. In many cases, if you mix that with tenacity and a certain amount of talent and luck, you can sustain a decent career.

That’s not how I create, again… as it is tied to life and circumstance, my music has generally been cathartic observations of what life presents, and each new record in many ways is a reaction to the one before. So in the most blunt of terms, I make music to better understand myself as I change.

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For all of you who want nothing to do with my music, have tried and don’t get it, or think I’m a total hack, continue on to the next blurb, as I’m going to spend the next few paragraphs stroking myself and thinking that I’m super.

Anyways, heres a bunch of videos… it’s hard to give a solid overview after twenty-something albums, but anyways…

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Are there WAY more nerds in metal than we thought? Is maybe the prerequisite for being a moderately succesful metal band just being cool enough to hang out with the jocks in the smoke pit at school? How many shredding bands do you know of that play incredibly well, yet are ignored because of the intangible NERD factor?

Is it possible through touring, etc., for lots of NERDS to get the NERD trained out of them to the point where they condemn other NERDS for their lack of “hangability?”

Maybe the secret sauce of metal’s allure is that it allows people to deflect lots of rage and hostility from a world that DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT by being “dark and menacing.”

The darkest and most menacing people I know of are usually either hyper-religious, into Jay Z, or don’t listen to music at all.

Metal is CATHARSIS, and a TRUE ART FORM.

My name is Devin, and I am a full blown fucking nerd.

How about you?

-DT

Is long hair really cool anymore? Just a question… I mean, I’m not one to judge, because I went bald at 26 and just grew gross hair in protest… but now, if I don’t shave it, I look like fryar Tuck, so me aside…

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So Borivoj Krgin eh? [Krgin runs Blabbermouth.- Ed.] Here’s my story about the man…

He signed SYL. Without Bori, there would be no current anything for me in terms of my metal career. He rocked me hard. And Nevermore, Stuck Mojo etc…

He let me sleep on his couch for three or four months while I was writing City. He was (is) a good friend.

Blabbermouth is a site I go to almost everyday. I would bet any metal musician who tells you they’ve never been is full of shit. It’s incredibly hard to resist reading things about yourself that are either flattering, or make you look like a total douchebag.

The thing is:

He doesn’t make the stuff up. Any jackassery that I have been quoted as saying, I really did say. Blabbermouth changed the way we do interviews by making us accountable.

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I am working on my first, full blown musical… and yes (much to some folks’ chagrin), it’s a new Ziltoid record. It going to be called Z2, and I’m taking it to the moon.

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Devin Townsend has been crawling up the hill to public acceptance in a desperate and obvious manner since his dubious introduction to public conciousness on the awkward and critically ill recieved Sex And Religion by Steve Vai.

The level of insecurity laid bare by the incessant regurgitation of prior ideas and themes, increasingly more dilluted, has resulted in a four record “project” called the “dtp” (not to be confused with one of the many other rapidly cycling identities bestowed on the public with equal faux grandeur and self important themes.) The implication that we should all care now crests in the judgmental and self righteous Addicted, which seems to imply that his “newfound sobriety” is the answer to all the world’s ills, and that we should all follow suit, set to a antiquated, late 90’s “White Zombie-esque” dance metal vibe.

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Yo cats, I’m Devin Townsend. I’m a middle class, white Canadian male. I am bald with bad teeth and I am 37 years old. I used to front a band called Strapping Young Lad. I have put out around twenty albums between SYL and my solo records over the last eighteen or so years. I have a record label called HevyDevy Records that distributes my records to the the best of our ability. I produce and mix bands. I have done some great work and some shitty work. I don’t really care about downloading because the industry changed and I have never sold enough records for me to make more than a normal living. Please have a great day and thanks for any and all support.

I am in the middle of a four record project called “The Devin Townsend Project.” Ironically enough, and EGADS!, today I am taking over one of my favorite websites, MetalSucks.

I have a ton of things on my mind today, please enjoy… even if you hate my fucking guts, hopefully I can provide you with some cool stuff to chew on.

HOTCHA!

-Devin Townsend