2009 was a pretty awesome year to be a Devin Townsend fan. First, he released two new albums, Ki and Addicted, neither of which sounded at all like the other and both of which were incredible. Then, he embarked on his first tour in a half a decade and pretty much slayed everyone in his path. Townsendy goodness rained down like mana from the heavens.

Well, break out your umbrellas, kids, ’cause Heavy Devy released a statement on Friday afternoon which pretty much lays out all his plans for 2010 – and it sounds like it’s gonna make 2009 feel like a little hiccup on the Townsend Scale. The complete statement is after the jump, but here are the highlights:

• He’s going to perform Ziltoid in its entirety, “complete with a really awesome performance,” at the Tuska Festival in Finland this July.
• He plans to do a North American headlining run in October, which means we finally get “more than 30 minutes!”
• He’s still working on the next two albums in The Devin Townsend Project’s four-album cycle, Deconstruction and Ghost. He calls Deconstruction “a triumph for me” and promises that it will be heavy, but not the way you’re thinking: Devy predicts that “it will surprise quite a few foliks that expect my current vision of ‘heavy’ to be like me in my mid 20′s or early 30′s. Deconstruction sounds like someone’s angry dad.”

I actually think Devin’s being too modest in that last part. I’ve made my dad angry quite a few times in my life, and I promise that these moments never resulted in Old Man Rosenberg making anything as awesome as a Devin Townsend album.

Here’s Devin’s statement in its entirety:

Click to read more…

This bootleg footage of Saturday night’s show brought to you by someone calling him or herself “OnaiggacA.”

Between the Buried and Me, Cynic, and Scale the Summit are all amazing bands. And on Saturday night at Irving Plaza here in NY, they played amazing shows. The kinds of shows that, at any given moment, might make you think “Hey, this is one of the most fun shows I’ve ever been to.”

But make no mistake. The headliner of this tour is Mr. Devin Fucking Townsend.

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Self-proclaimed “Long time Suckalo, first time e-mailer” LordBling attended the Super Orgasm Tour in Dallas on Tuesday, and managed to capture what is actually some pretty decent quality footage of Cynic and The Devin Townsend Project in action. In the unlikely event that you still need to be sold on the majesty of this tour, we thought we’d share the clips with you all.

Cynic, “Integral Birth”

More after the jump!

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The Super Amazing Orgasm Tour has kicked off, which means that Mr. Devin Fucking Townsend is now tearing up stages for the first time in more than three years. The show doesn’t pass through NYC ’til the end of the month, but Blabbermouth posted some bootleg footage of Heavy Devy and his band performing, so I get to live vicariously through someone’s cellphone.

I was wondering how Mr. Townsend was going to handle the live absence of Anneke van Giersbergen, whose vocals are such a vital part of why Addicted kicks so much ass, and apparently the answer is play some of them via tape, sing some of them himself, and spend part of the time being the goofy front-dude we all know and love. Works for me.

Here’s “Supercrush,” which is my favorite song on Addicted. It sounds so good it makes me wanna engage in heavy kissing. But not just, like, regular kissing – sex kissing.

Get a list of remaining dates to see Devin with Between the Buried and Me, Cynic, and Scale the Summit after the jump. And Blabbermouth has some more live footage for ya, too.

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This winter is shaping up to a great incredible one for U.S. metal tours.The European Summer festivals ain’t got nothin’ on us… ok, well yeah they do, but this winter’s U.S. metal tour slate is still most excellent.

There’s the much ballyhooed Between the Buried and Me / Cynic / The Devin Townsend Project / Scale the Summit North American Orgasm Tour, about which Axl shared his man-juice excitement yesterday. On January 15th death metal Egyptologists Nile kick off their mammoth Those Whom the Gods Detest Tour with Immolation, Krisiun, Abigail Williams and Dreaming Dead. Only five days later Arch Enemy embark on the MetalSucks-sponsored Tyrants of Evil Tour with Exodus, Arsis and Mutiny Within. The Pagan/Folk metal tour du jour this Winter is headlined by Korpiklaani with Tyr, Swashbuckle and White Wizzard in tow (the latter of whom are certainly not pagan or folk). And tomorrow The Metal As Art Tour featuring Hypno5e, Revocation and The Binary Code kicks off in Brooklyn and traverses the country for 31 days. Yowza!

Full lists of dates and venues for all four tours are posted after the jump. There’ve been a few venue changes so make sure you double-check… then feel free to bitch about how none of these tours are coming to your city and proceed to blame us.

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Just a few more days and the Between the Buried and Me/Cynic/The Devin Townsend Project/Scale the Summit North American Orgasm Tour 2010 begins! And it’s gonna be your first chance to see Heavy Devy live in what seems like for-ever. Well, okay, it’s only been like three years, but, c’mon, it’s Devin Townsend! Three years is too long!

Here’s a pretty fantastic tease: video of The Devin Townsend Project rehearsing for the tour. In addition to the band sounding awesome, the video gives away at least a few songs they’re apparently gonna be breaking out. I can’t wait…

Get Between the Buried and Me/Cynic/The Devin Townsend Project/Scale the Summit dates after the jump.

Click to read more…

I’ll keep this short and sweet: Devin Townsend’s genius knows no limits, and as part of an ongoing effort to promote his awesome new album, Addicted, he’s launching a series of short videos, “Deep Thoughts with Devin Townsend.” Which are very much like “Deep Thoughts with George Handy,” only way, way more METAL!!!

Here’s the first one, “Hot Sex.”

You can watch future installments by visiting Dev’s Addicted e-card. I bet they’re only gonna get funnier from here.

Addicted is out now on InsideOut Music.

-AR

Last week one of you accused us of being a “bunch of negative miserable fucks.” I can only assume that this person had never been to this site before, and was somehow unaware that it’s called “MetalSucks.”

Still, this was probably the best worst week ever, because:

• Devin Townsend took over our site for a day!
• We finally got around to making MetalSucks t-shirts and hoodies!
• Vince interviewed Between the Buried and Me’s Dan Briggs for the third time in as many years!
• There’s gonna be a new Pig Destroyer album in 2010!
• There’s a new Sigh song!
• Varg Vikernes came out of the closet!

So, see? LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!!

In conclusion:

Have a good weekend.

-AR

In no particular order…

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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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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