Artist: Strapping Young Lad
Label: Century Media
Release: 2006
Rating: 5/5
Strapping Young Lad? Yep, the mad metal scientist, or rather metal mad doctor, Devin Townsend! Who wouldn’t know him? The guy is one of the bravest creatures around while also being one of the biggest oddballs in the music business, all thanks to a one-of-a-kind fearless, brilliant genius who keeps wowing us again and again in totally unpredictable ways. This time, the fifth studio album from S.Y.L. is probably their last, at least going by the announcements! Devin Townsend is supposedly going to disband the band after it and devote himself to his duties as a dad! Well, the time comes,…
With “The New Black,” he brings a broad field of musical perception right from the get-go, the kind that marks Devin Townsend’s vision for Strapping Young Lad: an imposing, refined blend of influences stemming from his friendship with genres like industrial metal, melodic death metal, an airing-out with dashes of jazz and funk rock, plus a few pinches of dance and techno. Guest appearances also left a clear mark on the album: Oderus Urungus (vocals), who comes from the ranks of comedic death metallers GWAR, and indie/punk singer Bif Naked. That’s a few departures from the S.Y.L. standards that the new album brings!
“The New Black” is simply, once again, one of those splendid albums where you don’t know for a second what Townsend is about to pull out of his sleeve. He screams like the maddest madman, like a vampire who’s about to rip you apart with all his erupting rage, then turn you into fertilizer and scatter you over the McDonald’s fields that grow feed for pigs, and then, out of nowhere, Devin can morph into a proper opera singer through his excellent, trademark melodic explosiveness. The New Black is still, at its core, a completely mad metal album. But along with the classic crazy humor, this time the aggression of its rebellious message stings the ear more than ever, coming from Townsend’s disagreement with, and refusal to accept, the contemptuous attitude the music industry and media have toward metal today. This fusing of different genres on “The New Black” is a parody of today’s music industry and the way it cuts its deals.
The opener Decimator is actually an innocent conception compared to the rest of the record. Right from the opening we run into a brilliantly glued-together collision of thrash and operatic symphonic grandeur, topped like a cherry on a fruit platter by a wittily chosen “baroque” guitar flourish that takes the fatally destructive mood and tips it into an idyllic, seemingly temporary innocence of a sequence of “properly” tuned notes. You Suck! follows, underpinned by thrash/death metal blasts. Its message is that absolutely everyone, starting with S.Y.L. and going all the way across the music industry, “sucks”: “Hell yeah you(we) fuckin’ suck!!!” Go ahead and convince yourself. For a moment you don’t know whether the song’s “groove” will keep swelling madly toward unstoppable chaotic dimensions, or whether some mellow transitional spot will turn it upside down. A one-of-a-kind fusion, so good you get sweetly sick from all this chaos! Anti Product is the finest example of Townsend approaching the genius of Zappa, when S.Y.L. attack with bursts of horns, suddenly out of nowhere. Devin shrieks furiously and, of course, once again drowns out absolutely every instrument! How can you even top all his madness? The king of the “insane metal” genre. Far Beyond Metal, which also features Oderus Urungus on vocals, is probably the maddest song on the record and the most direct parody of metal. Everything’s thrown in. Blazing riffs, furious screaming, and synthesizers whose electronics amount to a real negation! A dash of GWAR draped in the aura of Townsend’s madness! A successful attempt across the board. The brutal screaming of “Don’t you fuck with metal!?” suddenly morphs into an operatic, melodically tinted chorus, where Devin Townsend goofily mimics the squeaky-clean vocals demanded of today’s trendy power metallers. Fucker is also marked by the punky female vocals of singer Bif Naked. In its parody and boundless mockery, through chaotic riffs and a “Game – Boy”-sounding guitar solo, plus of course Townsend raging on vocals, it’s one of the most interestingly patented and appealing songs on the album. Almost Again offers an exceptional atmospheric contrast, with melodic “clean” vocals floating over a backdrop built from a wild “thrashy” rhythm (pushed back in the production so the subtle vocal gets depth of atmosphere). Now you’re just waiting for Townsend to go nuts again, which soon happens. An excellent mix of screaming and melodic singing, with “black metal”-style symphonic synths flooding the vocals in the background. Ballad Plyphony, opened by a dirty semi-acoustic motif over which Devin’s subtle vocal is laid, is really the intro to the closing title track The New Black. The intro flows straight into a militant beat, swelling destructive devastation, the mood indescribably, highly apocalyptic, a ballistic atmosphere of total madness. The most devastating song on the record, a head-ripper! And even this one surprises with a melodic “groove” in the chorus! A record where the amazement while listening just doesn’t, and doesn’t, seem to end!
This album is literally mad, unhinged, or whatever else you might imagine under those terms! Plenty of people will, because of the higher level of experimentation, probably miss the old Strapping Young Lad. But “The New Black” is an honestly sparkling, indescribably lively, uniquely and recognizably distinctive, dazzling product, the kind that’s pretty rare these days or very hard to find. It’s graced by the one-of-a-kind genius of Devin Townsend, who remains one of the bravest musicians, one of the great musical gurus, even today. “The New Black” is a convincingly sharp, arrogant, uncompromising sneer at the music industry, and in this bout Townsend climbs out of the ring as the big winner, who in his sermon can even adorn himself with the title “the modern metal Zappa.” Townsend delivers an extraordinary genre fusion, naturally in the embrace of hot “thrashing” and incredible “blast beats.” The musicians glow with explosiveness, adrenaline buzz, technical flawlessness and unrivaled tightness, because so many things happen at once on this record in such a short time that only a few of them stick in your head. You have to be a real athlete to pull this off! It’s a relatively demanding album that needs a bit more time to settle in, yet at the same time it pulls you in right away, since it delivers the intensity of first-class, hard-hitting riff-driven adrenaline rush like few others. This is an album for everyone looking for something different, fresh, alternative and, above all, “crazy-making” nuts! A real shame that the creative Devin is announcing a long break for the band after “The New Black”! Madness without competition!
Lineup
Devin Townsend – vocals, guitar
Jed Simon – guitar
Byron Stroud – bass guitar
Gene Hoglan – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Bif Naked – vocals (8)
Oderus Urungus – vocals (7)
Production
Devin Townsend
Track List
1. Decimator
2. You Suck
3. Antiproduct
4. Monument
5. Wrong Side
6. Hope
7. Far Beyond Metal
8. Fucker
9. Almost Again
10. Plyophony
11. New Black
Trajanje albuma: 42:45
