DEVIN TOWNSEND INTERROGATED BY ALEX S. JOHNSON
© 2005 zero tolerance magazine featured in issue 003

Tales of extraordinary madness

After the peripatetic Canadian singer and guitar wizard dusted off his full metal jacket for the last Strapping Young Lad opus, SYL, in 2003, it seemed inevitable that Devin Townsend’s blistering cybercore outfit would soon fade from sight, if not memory.

It seemed certain, as well, that the gentler, more atmospheric Devin Townsend Band would take its place, painting ambient textures whereas the other threw you to the floor and laid on with iron fists. This being the case, the announcement of a fourth studio album from Strapping caught many by surprise. On the new slab, titled Alien, the warm fuzz of Devin’s solo work drapes itself across the spiky monolith that is Strapping’s metal assault. Yes, ‘The Dev’ rides again, afterburners smoking. His newest mission: “to make people feel awful”. Zero Tolerance’s Alex S. Johnson gets the inside knowledge on Vancouver’s most extreme.

1. THE SENTINEL
Who (he asks in the manner of a heavy metal journalist) is this man of metal; this metal man; this gnashing icon of steel? Who is this goatee’d barbarian, brimful of wrath, hurling curses on the assembled hordes? And why, why, why is he wearing a dramatically oversized cowboy hat? Is this the long-promised Metallion? The Painkiller? Streaking from the skies, engines roaring, his ragged locks clotted with vodka-based vomit, an eerie intensity to his stare - dare we ask the name of this champion? This firebreathing android? Our saviour? But hark, it speaks...

“I feel like a parody of myself,”

says Devin Townsend of his tongue-in-cheek performance style as Strapping Young Lad’s frontman.

“That’s allowed me to commit to things in a more realistic way on some level... Knowing you’re a parody, you can say crazy shit. If you take it to heart, you’re going to be in a puddle on the floor, but if you’re a parody, you can say [with an evil black metal voice]: 'The prince of darkness, WAAAAGHHH!’ Even though I’m not really an actor, I think you have to take on characters as a singer, as a musician. And in order to commit to that character, even if that character’s just part of an energy, or whatever, then you have to commit to being Ozzy, or Halford, or Hetfield, or anybody else.”

Anybody else... such as, say,

“The Dev”. “A lot of the people in metal do it because they take it seriously,” Devin continues. “I’m not talking about Sum 41. As much as I like the band, it’s a parody that’s making fun of something. For me, I fucking live metal! Fucking hell, man. Yes, some people think it’s stupid, but I’m not stupid - smart as shit! That parody and that character allows the metal I like to project an energy that’s untouchable elsewhere. I’m talking about energy that melts your fucking face, man. And I can’t do that by being Devin. But I can do that by being ‘The Dev’.”

But Devin realises that having an alter ego doesn’t give him a licence to kill (except maybe in musical terms).

“Between you and me, in an interview, I can say that, but I’m not going to go out and say [á la Greta Garbo] ‘I vant to be alone!’ I’m moody here, or whatever, but no more so than Byron Stroud or Gene Hoglan [Strapping’s bassist and drummer, respectively].”

In fact, Alien consolidates modes of being that the prodigal Townsend usually scatters across multiple projects.

“I’ve really been polarized in terms of my musical output in the past” says the 32-year-old musician

“With Strapping, I might as well bring some of these worlds together, right? Have a bit of the most extreme I can do, juxtaposed with some crazy ambience like I might do on one of my solo records. Lyrically, it’s the most extreme I’ve ever been."

"Put it this way: if you were in a relationship with somebody and you wanted to be sadistic, I think you would utilise quiet every now and then. Just so when you do come back in on it, it’s like, ‘I was just fuckin’ with ya! We were just fuckin’ with ya!’ I think maybe that’s where the mystery of it comes on this record. We know how to do these things, I know how to do dynamics, but I don’t necessarily want to say, ‘Well, here’s the Strapping ballad.’ For this record, I went out of my way to make people feel awful by the end of it. By the last thing that happens on the CD, there’s going to be some people that say, ‘Fuck that!’ The way I look at it is, well, I feel that way, so fuck you!”

Since being diagnosed with a bipolar (once referred to as manic depressive) disorder, Devin has been taking Zyprexa to combat the extreme highs and lows that come with his condition.

“I went off my medication to do this record. I’m back on it now, but I went off of it under the guidance of my wife and my family and everybody, just to see if I was having it as a placebo. Because I made some really fucking bad mistakes a few years ago which led me to go on this medication."

"The medication was some pretty heavy shit. I thought, well, I’m doing this to appease my family, the people around me, my band, and all these people I ended up fucking over last time, so I said to everybody, ‘Look, I’m just going to hide in the basement here, but I’ve gotta figure this out.’ I’m married, and I’ve got mortgages and dogs. I can’t fucking freak out - I just can’t, it’s not feasible. I said to them, ‘Let me freak out for my music’s sake, and if I’m doing anything really stupid, just let me know.’ So I just hid in the basement. I fucking made a studio in the basement of our house and hid there. Actually, by the end of it I started getting so mad at the fact that I had to take the pills. Not because I’m not going to, but because I know now that I have to.”

2. THE ECLECTIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST
Devin ascribes his haywire neurochemistry to

“taking tons of shitty acid in 1998”.

This sort of hideous brain-rape by demons of the id must’ve been unimaginable to the young Devin, who didn’t even get around to touching a beer until the age of 23.

“But then the music industry fucked me in the ass!"

The big, snarling music industry beast bent The Dev over, right?

“I went down to LA at the age of 19, you know. I really liked Godflesh and Fear Factory, all this stuff. This Steve Vai thing came up and he said, ‘Well, come down and sing’. And it’s like, yeah, this is great, I can come down and everybody’s going to think I’m cool. So I went down and screamed and fuckin’ stuck microphones up my ass and all this stupid shit. And then at the end of it, everybody’s like, ‘He’s an idiot!’, and I was like, yeah, but, but...”

Having toured with Aerosmith, living the sweet dreams of fellow Canadian Mike Myers in Wayne’s World, the wild beast of stage and scream was reduced to working at a Vancouver restaurant. That is, until an unexpected phone call flopped The Dev onto another hot griddle altogether: England. It was a band called The Wildhearts, and they were looking for a guitarist.

“Me and the singer in that band have an unnervingly fucking weird relationship,” Devin says, “or have had in the past. He phoned me up and said, ‘Come move to England and play some fucking rock-’n’roll’, right. And I’m still going, ‘well, okay, rock’n’roll, okay.’ So I went and moved to this part of England where everybody did drugs. And drank. And beat each other up.”

In that exact order?

“Actually, it was: drank, did drugs, beat each other up. And they were all smoking.”

To combat the toxic clouds on the tour bus, Devin actually wore a gas mask emblazoned with the legend “Captain Canada”.

“I was just like, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you and your drugs!"

"Then that didn’t work. Then I went back to Vancouver. And then Roadrunner said, ‘Hey, we got your demo.’ It wasn’t called Strapping then, it was just me freaking out. ‘Come to New York’, they said. This was after I had been dropped by Relativity, all this shit. So I came to New York for Roadrunner, and they fucking bought me soft-shelled crabs and powdered my balls for a couple of days, and then I went home, and start doing demos, thinking okay, cool. They called me up, and they said:

‘The owner of Roadrunner thinks that your music’s just noise. So we’re not going to release it.’"

At this point in the game, Devin’s options narrowed to a choice between doing drugs, and doing lots of drugs.

“I had a bunch of really good and bad experiences, and all of a sudden I had a real poisonous experience. It just put me in a position where I freaked out - really freaked out. I started thinking stupid shit and ended up dragging my family and my band and everybody around me into it. And I went back on the medication, and ended up making really nice records for a couple years, ‘I see your point of view’ records, you know.”

Which brings us back full circle, to Alien, and its tales of extraordinary madness.

“I don’t know how healthy it is,” Devin says of the disc.

“I’d say for me it was really healthy, but honestly, I don’t want anybody to listen to it. Of course, as an artist and as a musician I want everybody to listen to it, but for my girl and my mom and the people around me, I think, ‘this is going to suck.’ “I don’t care about the music, it’s just fucking music. Download it, I don’t care. It’s like taking a shit. No, it’s like puking. That’s better. It’s like ‘Roaulfgh, God!’ Then you have to promote it, where you can justify it. I think that’s how I’m going to go about the promotion of this. I definitely don’t really want to say to anybody that they should listen to it. But if you like Strapping, it’s more Strapping. It’s wicked.”

3. HAIR IS THE WORD...
These days, Devin limits his substance intake to “smoking weed like they’re going to stop growing it”.

As for The Dev...

“The Dev doesn’t exist right now. He’s been subdued. The last time The Dev was out, Gene came over and I drank a 40 of vodka [1.2 litres] in probably an hour. I ended up just crying about something, then I puked all over myself.”

Most people who succumb to this state end up a bit humiliated. For Devin, it was worse. At that point in time, his hair was feeling its way towards an apogee of selfexpression, unfurling like the proverbial bud. Then chunks fell on it, and all was lost. A hero to victims of male pattern baldness everywhere, Devin concedes that his head ...

“looks a bowling ball with a fringe. So I said, ‘I’m going to do what this hair wants to do. Whatever this hair wants to do, I’m going to let it do. I’m not going to cut it; I’m not going to brush it; I’m not going to do anything, right? So we did the DVD, and I saw the hair and I thought, ‘this is horrid, it’s like a fucking ostrich egg with a skirt on!’ So I decided then, okay, well fuck it, I’m not going to wash it anymore.

So it’s been since January that I stopped washing it. And now I’ve got these horrible knotty things starting up, but fuck it, I’m just going to let it do what it wants to do. And so I puked on ‘em the other night. And then Tracy [Devin’s wife] put me in the bathtub and fucking hosed me down with a dog hose, and I was like, ‘That sucks!’ - I was on a roll there!”

Sicked-on ostrich eggs to the side, Devin describes the spirit of the new record as “improvisational” and elaborates,

“There’s less fear, now that I kind of went there with myself. Just grab the guitar, fucking go for it. Chances are, you’re going to hit something cool. And if you don’t, who cares? Because you’re not the best in the world. But you’re good. And no one’s better at being you than you. So hit ‘er. “With Strapping, you can listen to my issues, or our issues- I don’t give a fuck if you care about them, I don’t give a shit if you get off on it for anything more than pummelling.

You know what I mean? Because that’s the first thing that it’s supposed to do. But I also know for myself, as a result of doing the Devin Townsend stuff or whatever, I really like the ability to go a little further with it if I want to, right. But at the end, all you’re going to find is me, and your interest in the music is going to depend on how interesting you find it. If you want it, it’s there.”