Author: Rok Klemše
Artist: Devin Townsend Project
Label: Inside Out Records
Release: 2009
Runtime: 01:06:44
Rating: 4/5
In 2006, Canadian musical virtuoso and eccentric genius Devin Townsend broke up his bands Strapping Young Lad and The Devin Townsend Band. Years of recording, extensive touring and media obligations had taken their toll, and Devin was sick of the music circus. The following year he put out the record Ziltod the Omniscient, which even hinted a little that Devin was stepping away from an active music career altogether. Well, music never left the workaholic Townsend alone, and his retirement didn’t last long. He came back clean of drugs and alcohol, spiritually reborn, even shaving off his famous “skullet”, and announced no fewer than four albums, all born during the quiet years. Devin realized the songs had distinct characters and split them into four stylistically different sets. The first one he packaged up as the first part of a “four-part trilogy”: Ki.
Ki is supposed to mean life force, and the music on the album sums up the associations that word conjures up perfectly. Ki is a lively journey full of ups and downs, with the still sea on one side and the relentless power of nature on the other. In between, Devin captures man as a “prisoner” of this world, torn between peace of mind and war. So Devin leads us through Ki with the sensitive guitar lines of the opener A Monday, which melts into the esoteric Coast. With brilliant yet simple arrangements, Townsend builds a dreamy, almost esoteric atmosphere, capped off by a gorgeous, clean vocal that you could call the perfect picture of the reborn, calmed-down Townsend. If you’d expect the wall of sound Devin was famous for, mostly from his work on the Strapping Young Lad material, Ki mostly offers the exact opposite. Coast alone is full of groovy bass lines and minimalist but varied, well-thought-out drumming from the hands of the legendary Duris Maxwell (The Temptations, Jefferson Airplane, Gene Simmons, …), while Devin rounds out the unbearable lightness of being with simple but incredibly ambient lines and atmospheric effects. But even without the skullet and with the drugs gone, Devin still bares his teeth and shows his other self, the one he perfected so well with Strapping Young Lad. The nearly self-destructive part of Devin’s psyche bursts out in the brutal, excellent Disruptr, where Townsend seriously wrecks his vocal cords with aggressive growls and screaming, proving once again his chameleon-like vocal ability. On one side he’s a “Buddhist”-calm, storytelling old man with a velvet voice, on the other a psychopath in the middle of a hurricane, growling and screaming. Even though Ki mostly works as outstanding confessional lyricism, full of symbolism and supersensory perception that Devin and the band brilliantly translate into music, Devin wouldn’t be good old Devin if he didn’t cut through the apparent seriousness somewhere in the middle with the goofy Trainfire, which he leads us into with a crazy Elvis vocal turn that gives the song a rockabilly flavor, while the lyrics are about internet porn, something Townsend himself was hooked on. Lady Helen, a gorgeous acoustic ballad, probably dedicated to Devin’s wife, nicely proves that Ki is a soft, tender story full of intimacy and subtlety. The album peaks in the title epic, where Devin’s spacey, ethereal approach to guitar playing shows itself in all its beauty, building tension with a slow rise of soft melodies that explode at the top into a layered, Strapping Young Lad/Infinity-style volcanic eruption with high-flying vocals, before the hurricane wind dies down and turns into a gentle breeze. The album is closed out superbly by the ambient Demon League, which together with A Monday forms a strong pillar for the incredible forces and energies Devin has locked up in Ki.
Ki is probably something you wouldn’t expect from Devin in your wildest dreams, yet at the same time you’d know we’ve just been waiting for him to step out from around the corner. Ki is an album full of subtle moments on one side and brutal, mighty outbursts on the other, full of tender clean vocals and raw, aggressive growls, a perfect “chill-out” album that’s also a relentless, exhausting roller coaster of cruel ups and downs, full of Devin’s “trademark” madness, and an album that can proudly stand next to any Townsend release from the past. Ki is neither Strapping Young Lad nor the Devin Townsend Band; plain and simple, it’s Devin Townsend.
Lineup
Devin Townsend – vocals, guitar, fretless bass, programming
Jean Savoie – bass
Dave Young – keyboards, piano
Duris Maxwell – drums
Production
Devin Townsend
Tracklist
1. A Monday
2. Coast
3. Disruptr
4. Gato
5. Terminal
6. Heaven Send
7. Ain’t Never Gonna Win…
8. Winter
9. Trainfire
10. Lady Helen
11. Ki
12. Quiet Riot
13. Demon League
