“When my mother-in-law moved in with me, I was really pissed off, and the result was Alien”

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 4 October 2026

Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad

Venue: Kino Šiška
Interview date: November 30, 2012

In metal, and music in general, there are really few musicians and creators today as versatile as the brilliant Canadian Devin Townsend. What hasn’t this brilliant Canadian served up for us already? With his first serious entry onto the music scene, on Steve Vai’s album Sex & Religion, he let it be known he was something special. And sure enough, Townsend got so sick of the music business that he flipped it the bird and founded one of the most »pissed off« bands of all time, Strapping Young Lad. The disappointment when they ended in 2007 was huge, but Devin can boast an incredible solo catalog that oozes nothing but top quality. After the SYL story wrapped up, Devy came back from the dead with a space parody opera about an alien with an unquenchable craving for the ultimate cup of coffee, Ziltoid the Omniscient, and then shot himself into orbit with The Devin Townsend Project quadrilogy – the albums Ki, Addicted, Deconstruction and Ghost – exploring every last corner of his musical soul. The fifth part of the Devin Townsend Project is the wonderful Epicloud, and with The Epic Industrialist tour Devin Townsend made his first stop in Slovenia too, playing one of this year’s best shows at Ljubljana’s Kino Šiška on Friday, November 30, 2012. Before the gig, he gave us ten honest minutes as well.

RockLine: Hey Devin! Welcome to Slovenia, your first time here, and I hope not the last. Did you happen to have time to check out the city?
Devin: Thanks. No, sadly I haven’t seen the city, since I’m still recovering from a mild cold. So for the last few days I’ve been sleeping as much as I possibly can. The only things I’ve managed to do in Slovenia are a few interviews, drink coffee and go through my mail.

RockLine: The last big thing you put on was The Retinal Circus in London. That was a good month ago, so you’ve probably had plenty of time to think it over. Are you happy with how it turned out?
Devin: There was so much work behind that show that the whole thing could have gone off in completely different directions. Just the fact that we pulled it off is a huge miracle. Right now I’m already mixing the audio recording, and we’ve started editing the video footage too. I think the DVD will give a much more accurate look at what we wanted to achieve with the show. And everyone who didn’t get to see it will be able to see what the story was and what it was all about. Honestly, I’m still stunned that we managed to pull off something like that at all. I’ve never worked with such a huge number of people on a project, and in my world that’s something unfathomable. Even though I was the central figure in all of it, Paul Collins (editor’s note: Devin’s manager) and the others deserve just as much credit for the final success.

RockLine: That show was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen, so much was happening at once! You said you’ve already started work on the audio and video, so when can we expect the DVD?
Devin: We’ll do our best to get it out in the spring.

RockLine: I can’t wait to see it on screen!
Devin: Me too (laughs).

RockLine: In London you also played two Strapping Young Lad tracks. Does it bother you that quite a few people still nag you about why you don’t play more SYL material?
Devin: Yeah, to a degree. The point of playing those two songs was also to serve them up to people and prove I’m not afraid of them. I just don’t want to play them anymore, because my life is in a totally different place now. Even while we were playing them it felt weird, the Devin Townsend Project guy playing Strapping Young Lad (laughs). What matters to me is that I don’t close the door on that side of my past. I get a lot of questions about Strapping Young Lad, why I don’t play those songs anymore, whether I’m afraid of them… I don’t think I can be any clearer or more obvious that the music I’m making now comes about the same way the Strapping Young Lad songs did, only I’m in a completely different period. When I was writing Strapping Young Lad I was 23 and angry, and now I’m 40 and in a totally different stage of my life. The writing process stays the same. Alien or City weren’t made any differently than Ghost or Epicloud.

RockLine: You probably wanted to prove to people that you can play Strapping Young Lad easily any time, offer it to them one last time and close that chapter?
Devin: Absolutely, exactly!

RockLine: I might be totally off here, but it seems to me that Ziltoid is, and represents, the crazy persona of Devin Townsend from the Strapping Young Lad era?
Devin: I agree. When I stopped using all kinds of drugs, alcohol too, I noticed that part of my personality had become a parody of itself. To be able to distance myself from it, I started looking at that part of me as a character. That let me pour all the crazy ideas into that character, without it directly affecting me, even though that character is of course me too. When I started Strapping Young Lad, they weren’t a character, that was me, but over time they too became more and more of an estranged character. I wasn’t happy just playing a role. To be able to make music today, I have to be at least honest about everything going on around me. It’s important to me that people realize the music I’m making right now is who I am, whether they like it or not. I don’t want them to see me as just a new chapter in this character’s life. I can come to terms with that, but if people think that’s you and not Ziltoid or whatever else, it can get dangerous, because you have to be responsible for everything you do. Sometimes I feel like in heavy music you can say anything and get away with it. In a way you can, but people listen, they listen with their hearts too, so you have to be careful and clear about what your intentions are. And if you were vague about anything in the past, you have to be ready to answer questions like that too.

RockLine: Partly because of what you just said, it seems to me people still unfairly see you as some kind of crazy genius, without perhaps realizing that you’re first and foremost a serious musician with clear goals. Do you agree?
Devin: Definitely. I certainly don’t think I’m crazy, a genius or anything else, I’m just trying to figure out who I am. But mostly people want that first thing. Just recently we had a photo shoot in London where they dressed me up as a mad scientist. They asked if I was even okay with that, and I thought hard before answering. But all that matters to me is that people listen to the music, I don’t care how others try to sell it. I don’t burden myself with what people think of me. If they think I’m crazy, fine. Of course, I have to come clean, too. For many years I was stoned and did weird, stupid things. But I can’t deny that part of my life, that would be absurd. I’m aware of it and I accept it. My goal today is to weave between people’s ideas of who and what I am, while staying true to myself and my desire for what I want to be doing at the moment.

RockLine: Something that has always drawn me to your music is its honesty, and the fact that on every record of your career you can easily hear your personal stamp and your state of mind at the time that particular album was made. Did I hit or miss?
Devin: That’s true. When I was preparing for Retinal Circus I had to go through all the albums, and I noticed a kind of link between them. From Strapping Young Lad to Ocean Machine with a sort of bipolar approach, and then Alien, which reminded me of the time my mother-in-law moved in with me. There’s something of my personality, something of my life, on all the records. Synchestra and Alien were recorded at the same time, and an outside observer could quickly conclude that their diversity is a sign of schizophrenia. But back then my mother-in-law moved into my house, we lost everything we owned in a flood, and of course I was furious. Alien is the result of that. I started doing drugs and drinking, because I wanted to cure all that built-up rage, and the result of that is Alien. When Alien was finished I was completely overwhelmed that I’d let myself lose control, and I needed that to be able to reconnect with nature. I quit drinking, I walked in the parks of Vancouver, and the result of recovering from Alien was Synchestra. From a distance it might really look like a strange, confused product, but the explanation couldn’t be more logical, right? My life was crazy at first, then I squeezed that out of myself and became calm, and from there the road led here. If you look across the records, they’re literally a description of my life.

RockLine: Sadly our time is running out too fast. The next thing you’ll release is Casualties of Cool, then Z2, and there’s also talk of a project or album called Obviouser. Can you tell us more about that?
Devin: Obviouser is one of the things that’s still very deep in my head right now. It’s a bass-driven project, and at the moment I see a Misfits-like logo for it, a huge cloak, extraterrestrial influences and an Icelandic choir with apocalyptic, Godflesh-like bass lines.