For those of you not familiar with the work of
Devin Townsend, he is one of those one-of-a-kind musicians out there who have actually managed to create a sound and style for himself that doesn't sound like anybody else. Personally I think he is a genius with a touch of a madman, or maybe it's the other way around, depending on what music of his I'm listening to and what mood I'm in. Suffice to say that sometimes you can really feel the genius/madman in the music and other times it's less inspired. So with the release of his latest solo effort
Synchestra, I was pretty anxious to see where he would go after the monstrous
Strapping Young Lad album
Alien. I had the chance to interview him in connection with the release of
Synchestra here.
Devin Townsend explained that musically he will ping-pong from one side to another, and after the extreme
Alien, he needed to do something more calm and quiet. Of course, knowing
Devin Townsend, you can never know what he means with those words, since he after all is a metal musician. So rest assured,
Synchestra is also metal though you could have your doubts after listening to the very quiet and emotional opener,
Let it roll. Here it's only Devin and an acoustic guitar. This is certainly going to the other extreme since
Alien! I understand the reason for putting something this quiet as the opener, but still I'm happy it isn't longer since it's so sweet, cute and cuddly that it annoys the heck out of me!
Luckily next track
Hypergeek has the trademark
Devin Townsend weird stuff and blasting metal parts. Much better. The next songs continue to mix together more quiet parts with the massive walls of sound that are Devin's trademark. And we also get very, very weird parts here and now, where new listeners will go 'huh' and those familiar with earlier records will smile and thing 'Yup, that's Devin allright'.
The warm production is top notch, there isn't really anything I can put my finger on. The drums are crystal clear in the mix, keyboards help creating the perfect sound picture, vocals are all beautifully placed in the mix, and I could go on. And Devin's favoritism of multitracking is obvious with the insane amounts of dubbed guitars and a million other instruments you can only hear if you listen
really carefully but would be missed if he hadn't put them in there. I would probably have preferred a little bit less bass and maybe a less 'nice' sounding snare drum. But these are just my personal preferences and very minor critiques.
Triumph has the only real solo on the whole record and is performed by mr.
Steve Vai for whom
Devin Townsend sang on the album
Sex and Religion years ago. The solo is a nice and slow one, mostly sounding like something from
Steve Vai's
Ultra Zone record. Nice solo, but I really would have preferred some of the fireworks that I know mr. Vai is capable of. Oh well, the song is quiet and so a quiet solo is probably more fitting, but hey, I'm a fan of fireworks, ok?
Synchestra is a huge album with a lot of stuff to digest. A bit difficult to describe with only a few words since it's so diverse. Of his earlier releases it reminds me mostly of
Terria. Sometimes it's nice just as background music since some songs are mostly quiet ballads but this never goes on for too long before he wakes us up again with more weird stuff (but
good weird stuff). For example, there's a
polka part on it, for chrissakes!
There are a few songs that don't do much for me here. The opener
Let it roll is just too damn cute (in the not nice way!),
Sunset seems a bit too repetitive for me and there are parts here and there that are a bit boring. But then again sometimes I think these parts are only there to lull people to sleep so that they can be woken up again. In that way,
Synchestra is a very complete album. It seems that everything is put in there for a reason. Even the last song
Notes from Africa, which is very happy and most of all sounds like a 'Beach Boys 2000' song, seems to be there to finish the album off with promises of hope and happiness.
Synchestra stands out with it's completeness, it's sound perfection and the fact that it's just so damn musical! I don't know where mr. Townsend gets his inspiration from, but the fact that this inspiration is so obvious in almost all of the songs on Synchestra makes me hold on to the claim that he really is a genius. If you are a fan of
Devin Townsend, you'll love it. If you aren't, get ready for something that you don't see on new releases that often, namely
inspiration!
Written by
Tajs Sunday, March 5, 2006
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