Location: Zagreb / Tvornica kulture / Croatia
Date: February 12, 2017
Genius? Madman? As the saying goes, there’s only one small step between the two. Canadian music wizard Devin Townsend is said to be both, though as he himself says, the media often portray him that way unfairly. Watch the footage of the chaos that was Strapping Young Lad today and it really does look like Devin was one big step toward madness back then. Townsend has cleaned up the past, the crazy days of SYL chaos are behind him, and the last few years prove that what’s been hiding inside him all along (SYL very much included) is nothing but pure, simple genius. Toward the end of last year Devin Townsend Project put out their eighth studio album, and after plenty of impatient waiting they’re finally presenting it on European soil too.
This time Devin was joined by two bands that prog metal and prog rock fans hold in very high regard, Norway’s Leprous and America’s Between the Buried and Me, and the Norwegians were the first to step onto the Tvornica stage, at half past eight. The always nicely “dressed-up” band spent the lion’s share of their allotted time on the current album, The Congregation, released the year before last, and the only older song was the opener Foe from the predecessor Coal. What to say about Leprous’s set? There’s not much to fault, since it’s clear these guys are instrumental perfectionists who leave nothing to chance. The band’s tightness was at an extremely high level and the faster, “fired-up” parts were especially convincing, but the dreaminess, the repetitiveness and Einar’s overly dramatic vocals just didn’t go down all that well. Eyes and ears mostly ended up on the excellent drummer Baard Kolstad (Borknagar, ICS Vortex, ex-God Seed, ex-In Vain), who proved with his merciless pounding of the skins that he comes from somewhat more extreme genres. Given that until 2014 Leprous played as Ihsahn’s backing band, at his personal pick, it’s obvious they’re top-class musicians, but this time their set had me doing nothing but checking the clock to see when it would be over.
With Between the Buried and Me things already took a turn for the better, as the Americans hit the gas pedal and jolted the crowd out of its dreamy state. It’s well known that the band’s songs are generally of epic length, and they greeted the Croatian crowd with a full twelve-minute Fossil Genera – A Feed from Cloud Mountain. Despite a somewhat shaky sound at the start, in just under an hour BtBaM showed off their incredible variety, which is mostly completely unexpected. With this band you can hear absolutely everything, from blast beats and growl vocals to wild avant-garde keyboard and circus interludes of the kind you hear from bands like Devil Doll and Vulture Industries. Like Leprous, BtBaM know several extremes, with two diametrically opposed sides dominating: technical death metal on one end and Rogers’s clean vocals backed by keyboards on the other. The growl parts wore Tommy out a little this time, but he did better with the clean vocals, which, again just like with Leprous, you either love or hate. There were a touch too many songs with dominant clean vocals at the BtBaM set as well, and despite the mix of styles from death metal through jazz to progressive rock and avant-garde, and the band members’ astonishing technical skills, their show started to drag on endlessly. Or maybe the anticipation for Devin Townsend was simply too strong.
That was crystal clear when the crowd started loudly chanting “Devin, Devin!” at half past ten and exploded in bliss when the lights went out and the one-of-a-kind Devin Townsend walked onto the stage with his band of Canadian lumberjacks. On this tour Devin is presenting Transcendence, already the eighth studio album under the Devin Townsend Project name in just seven years, the first one made with the band contributing as a whole, and it captures Devin’s remarkable range very well, from sensual subtlety all the way to progressive metal madness. Despite the new album, the Tvornica crowd got Rejoice from the predecessor Sky Blue to start with, which works much better live than on the record, and the more than an hour and a half of the set really was one big joy. After a somewhat rough start the sound quickly improved and shone in all the brilliance of a massive wall of sound, and there’s not much point in mentioning individual songs, since each is a powerful story on its own that makes your cochlea ejaculate with bliss. Still, a few moments stood out in particular: the first single from Transcendence, Failure, made it clear on the album already with its epicness that it would be something special live, and it really was. When Devin strapped on his black Peavey seven-string beauty around his neck for the first time in ages, it was obvious we were in for some good old Hevy Devy, and the band roared and thundered into the eleven-minute prog chaos Planet of the Apes. The album version actually features Tommy Rogers of Between the Buried and Me, and it’s a shame they didn’t use the chance to repeat that live. An even nicer surprise was the rarely played specialty Accelerated Evolution that followed, Suicide, and until the end of the main set the crowd was in ecstasy again with the unforgettable Supercrush!, the anthem of little, farting, otherworldly nutsacks March of the Poozers and the royally epic Kingdom. The in-great-spirits band then left the stage, and the even-more-in-great-spirits crowd noisily called Devin back out, armed with just an acoustic guitar. As usual a solo version of the lovely Ih-Ah! should have followed, but Devin proved once again that his improvised surprises are always unexpected. He spotted a sign in the crowd asking him to play Deadhead, and Devin didn’t need to be asked twice, serving up a goosebump-raising impromptu version of the legendary song. Perpetuum Jazzile who? Devin is the real vocal ecstasy. An ode to love for that cuddling-and-lighters moment came with Ih-Ah!, and the guys said their goodbyes after more than an hour and a half with the ten-minute Higher. Devin proved yet again that he’s without a doubt the most charismatic frontman in metal and one of the few musicians from whom genuine love for what they do truly shines. Even though this was already my eighth Townsend show and I’d gone into the Zagreb gig in a slightly passive, routine frame of mind, Devin cast his spell once more and proved that routine is not a word that has any place in his vocabulary.
author: Rok Klemše
photos: Nina Grad
LEPROUS:
1. Foe
2. Third Law
3. The Price
4. The Flood
5. Rewind
6. Slave
BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME:
1. Fossil Genera – A Feed From Cloud Mountain
2. The Coma Machine
3. Lay Your Ghosts to Rest
4. Bloom
5. Option Oblivion
6. Life in Velvet
DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT:
1. Rejoice
2. Night
3. Stormbending
4. Failure
5. Hyperdrive
6. Where We Belong
7. Planet of the Apes
8. Ziltoid Goes Home
9. Suicide
10. Supercrush!
11. March of the Poozers
12. Kingdom
— encore —
13. Deadhead
14. Ih-Ah!
15. Higher
