Metal Hammer Interview April 2005
by Tommy Udo. Transcribed by Clare Preece

Devin Townsend has never been a man to half-heartedly fuck around, but even by his standards the latest Strapping Young Lad album ‘Alien’ is a completely unrestrained shriek of bleeding, screaming, burning-alive heavy metal mania. This truly is extreme rock’n’roll with the brakes off – careering towards the edge of a steep precipice. Even those of us who remain profoundly immersed in the most extreme noise spewing out of Norway and obscure parts of Eastern Europe couldn’t fail to be blown over backwards by ‘Shitstorm’ which sounds like Thor, God of Thunder throwing a temper tantrum.

It is one of those “Holy Fuck!” moments in metal, that makes every other raging angry young man sound like they’re possibly just mildly irritated by somebody swiping the last strawberry cream from the Milk Tray box. Most musicians – even the most strung out obvious heroin casualties – are often coy about the relationship between drugs and their music. Not Devin. In his case, it’s when he stops taking drugs that things get crazy.

“Last year I went completely off the rails,” he says in a matter of fact way. “I stopped taking my medication and I was just gone. It was ‘Shitstorm’. That’s what you hear.” A lot of people will tell you that they are ‘manic depressives’, though that usually means that they get a bit high then they get a bit down in the dumps. But for those who have to deal with the real condition, it’s a bit more like being shot out of a cannon one minute and then sinking to the bottom of the ocean right after with no ‘normal’ bit in between.

“For a long time I didn’t realise that I was bi-polar,” says Devin. “I’d just think, ‘No, I’m just creative.’ But sooner or later you have to accept it. I’m a manic depressive and I guess you have to use your delusions.” Devin certainly isn’t out looking for anyone to pity him, nor does he advertise his condition as making him the craziest motherfucker on the block, but it’s definitely part of the raw cathartic power that Strapping Young Lad springs from. “I had a crazy year last year. We had a flood at the studio, my wife and I had a very harsh time together, I’ve had to deal with some freakazoid following you around outside and soon it’s just… waaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!

The record starts out bitter – ‘Imperial’ [the opening song] starts off in a bitter place, ‘Zen’ [the final song] is supposed to be an acceptance that as fucked up as things are, there’s little you can do to make them less fucked up.” The final track is actually ‘Info Dump’, a long ambient run-out that is just electronic noise that ends with a kid screaming that, according to Devin, is supposed to be the listener. “I always see Strapping Young Lad as being like the scared little kid that sees these constant images on TV of death, rape and war who just goes… Waaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh!” says Devin. “I don’t want to feel this way. I really want to be the guy in the Snoopy pyjama pants who goes ‘ommmm ommm’ and thinks that everything is OK,” he says.

“The new record isn’t a concept album, it has no linking theme. The title is just the one we settled on and it’s more about being ‘alien’ in the sense of being alienated than in being from another planet.” As well as making these terrifying, intense slabs of extreme metal with Strapping Young Lad, the former Steve Vai Band guitarist is a respected producer – he was behind the desk for Soilworks’ impressive ‘Natural Born Chaos’, Lamb Of God’s ‘As the Palace Burns’ and December’s ‘The Lament Configuration’ – as well as having a parallel career with the more prog oriented Devin Townsend Band. “I need to get the freakout out of the way before I can do something else. After this album I’m going to do a much mellower one that will come out as a Devin Townsend Band record,” he says. “And then after that, I think that I want to do a pop record.” Pop? Oddly enough he regards all of his albums as pop records in that he sees them as artefacts for the here and now.

“Even with this album I want people to listen to it a few times, get into it, get something from it then throw it away,” he says. “What I feel is not unique. Maybe people being able to hear that in the music is cathartic for them, but at the end of the day, it’s just a record.” But patently is not: you can hear - without going going down the path of wankery here – a piece of the guy’s soul in there. “I maybe make light of it in the press, but every record I do, I have a breakdown after,” he says. Will this then be the last SYL album? “It may be,” he says. “I’ve said that about all of them. I hope so. It’s not like I wanna be doing this. I really want to be wearing Snoopy pyjama pants and going ‘omm ommm.’” “I really don’t know if what I went through in the creation of an album is really of any importance, if it’s something that the audience really needs to care about,” he says.

“I may have had a moment here and there, but I’m fine now.” Perhaps it is this refusal to attach too much importance to the process of creating his music, his unwillingness to play the tortured artist – throughout the interview, despite talking about his mental health, he seemed to be making light of it all – that undermines his presence in the world of extreme music. That and the fact that Strapping Young Lad has to be one of the WORST names for a band ever in the entire history of rock’n’roll. I mean, how the hell can you be scared of a band with a name that….camp? This is a band who really should sound like The Pet Shop Boys catering to the heavy leather market.

But this music is the logical extension of the direction that bands like Emperor were going in before they split up and it’s the sort of highly polished pyrotechnic black/death/thrash/power metal that anyone from Cradle Of Filth to Dimmu Borgir would probably sell their souls to make. Devin, y’see, is like a metal mechanic. He can get under the hood of any band – metaphorically speaking of course – and reverse-engineer the qualities that make them great. A self confessed student of heavy metal, he claims that he knows what words sound good to sing in metal songs and what words don’t. “Words like “shuuuuned” and ‘brace’ sound great in metal songs,” he says. “I generally try to use words like that.” Do you ever think about inventing your own language to sing in? “I did! I invented my own language when I was in high school. I had my own symbols, my own alphabet and everything. Then my teacher pointed out that there was nobody else I could speak to with it!”

It is the volatility of Strapping Young Lad and of Devin that makes them an exciting band to watch live. There’s the skill that comes from being a keen student of metal, of knowing how to throw the shapes and where to scream or throw in a solo or jump off the stage most effectively. But there’s also an undertone of real menace, That Devin’s comedy troll persona could mask something….dreadful. He’s one of the nicest goys you could ever meet but then they say that Harold Shipman could be a real charmer too. I ask if he enjoys playing live. “No I don’t,” he says frankly. “It’s just a part of the job…” So what keeps you doing it? “Well, I’ve thought about retiring a few times, but then I thought about what else I was qualified to do. I dot a piece of paper and wrote down what I was good at and the only thing on it was ‘FREAKING OUT’. So I guess I will just have to keep on doing that.”