Devin Townsend – Z²

Don’t believe the hype[rdrive]

Devin Townsend is an insanely prolific musician. In the last seven years, he has released ten different records, not counting this year’s Z² as a double album. If you’re like me, this would lead you to be healthily skeptical about the overall quality of Townsend’s output, which has ranged over the course of his career from the unbridled industrial mayhem of Strapping Young Lad to the ambient material of 2006's The Hummer. While I’m not a dedicated Townsend fan, SYL’s City and Ocean Machine have special places in my record collection as landmark prog/metal/whatever albums. The guy has an indisputable knack for writing beautiful, multi-layered melodies and catchy songs. But this central issue about quality versus quanity is what wrecks this album.

Z² is composed of two discs. The first, Sky Blue, is much closer to Townsend’s past work with The Devin Townsend Project. It’s sing-songy, vocally-centered, operatic power pop-rock. On this disc, Townsend adds the lovely vocal work of Anneke van Giersbergen, a Dutch singer who ably complements Townsend’s mid-register vocal performance.

And those are all the compliments you’ll get out of me about Sky Blue. The vast majority of the songs on this disc feel directionless, meandering, and stuffed full of multiple layers of vocals, ambient textures, and synthesizers. Townsend has clearly produced a huge amount of musical material here, but it’s a total wash. There’s no sense of organization or discipline, and there isn’t a single memorable guitar, bass, or drum passage to be had. The album feels like Townsend is constantly punching you in the face with his loudly emotional, brash, theatrical weirdness.

If there is any sort of emotional intelligence or resonance in this music, I can’t find it. It’s painfully annoying. It’s weird. It’s uninteresting. It sounds like the soundtrack to a discarded first draft of a musical by a third-rate composer. The only highlights to me were A New Reign, an almost-tasteful number that deliberately moves from dream-pop to hard-charging rock, and Before We Die, the penultimate track, which strips out most of the multiple layers of instrumentation and reduces itself to a simple, beautiful piece dominated by an acoustic guitar and Giersbergen’s vocal talents.

The second disk, Dark Matters, is a direct successor to Townsend’s 2007 album Ziltoid The Omniscient, a record about a megalomaniacal, coffee-obsessed alien. I enjoyed that album a fair amount, largely because Townsend didn’t let the weirdness of the lyrical content eclipse his songwriting; the tracks stood on their own. Unfortunately, Dark Matters does not. It kicks the musical theater element of the previous disc into overdrive, leaving most of the tracks feeling like mere set-pieces to occupy space in-between mildly amusing expository dialogue tracing Ziltoid’s exploits in a cosmic rock opera. Like Sky Blue, the music, such as it is, feels unfocused and boring. The guitar riffs and drum work are ever so slightly less lazy and straightforward than on the previous disc. The first song that feels like an actual song, Deathray, is ruined by Townsend’s decision to place a bunch of laser sound effects over it. I guess you might like this if you’ve ever watched one of those late-night Adult Swim infomercials and wanted it to be a musical.

This is a pretty terrible release. Nearly every facet of Z² is too self-referential, too goofy, too intentionally weird and too saccharine to be enjoyable. It feels criminally self-centered and self-indulgent. Reading MetalSucks’ review of this LP, I came across a perhaps overly irate commenter, Grant Fanning, who nevertheless summed up how I feel about Devy’s musical trajectory these days:

“…He hasn’t put out a good album since Synchestra and he’s reached Zappa-esque status amongst internet nerds out there. Going to a DT concert is like hanging out at a Reddit meetup. I’ve never been surrounded by so many bed head dorks who suck the [redacted] of this guy every [redacted] time he opens his mouth. Townsend can’t get through a verse without proudly proclaiming something cheeky to the audience like “ISN’T THIS WEIRD PEOPLEEEEE?!! ITS HEAVY BUT ITS ABOUT LOVE! WOW! I’M SO WEIRD BUT YOU CAN DEAL WITH IT!”

I’m sorry. This [redacted] just isn’t that good. Its [redacted] corny as [redacted], and has such thin substantive quality compared to Terria, Ocean Machine, Synchestra, Accelerated Evolution and ALL the Strapping stuff. This guy could (and does) [redacted] on a macbook, close the lid, package it as a part of a 6 million dollar kickstarter and every one of you [redacted] would buy his “art” and praise it.

Ziltoid is not funny.”

Yeah, he hit the nail on the head. 4.5/10 for a couple of fun tracks.

Z² is out now. Stream it on Spotify and buy it here.