Devin Townsend

He has a ton of stuff out. I am thinking about checking out some of his stuff. What albums would be a good starting point?

Start out with Synchestra

Nope, Terria and Accelerated Evolution.

Thanks. I will do that.

SYL's "City" is my favorite by Mr. Townsend.

Hey Rex, nice to see you over here too. I like that Batman drawing by the way. Couldn't tell you whether Arttie was right or not. I recently started learning to draw myself. Only because I have a new hobby that isn't really drawing. It is scrimshaw.

Now back to the thread at hand. Maybe I will consider a cheap download before going out and spending my hard earned cash on someone I know nothing about.

SpectreFate wrote:

SYL's "City" is my favorite by Mr. Townsend.

It's a good thing that I did a bit of research otherwise, I would have had no clue that SYL is Strapping Young Lad. Us old folks don't do acronymns very well.

Wait for Eyesore to chime in on this one. He's a Devin fan-boy of the highest order. As for me, I've tried a few times to get into his stuff, but I don't get it.

I'm not familiar with this band. Is it metal?

any SYL is a good choice. his Addicted album is also very good.

Devin Townsend is amongst my top musicians, I love pretty much everything he's done. However, there's a lot of variation of styles in his material, so starting off is tricky. If you want blisteringly angry and heavy, go for Strapping Young Lad - City and Alien probably being the main highlights (though I also love The New Black). With the solo stuff, I think your best bet is to start with Accelerated Evolution - it's a good blend of accessible, catchy metal and almost dirge-like progressive music. Synchestra and Terria are somewhat similar in style as well. If you want the Hysteria of Devin's material, you should definitely check out Addicted!, which was my favourite album of 2009. I already feel like I'm rambling too much, but basically you can't go wrong.

Eyesore will probably do a better job of suggestions in due time, hah.

Huge Devin Townsend fanboy here.


As already alluded to in this thread, Devin's output spans a lot of ground. However, I always recommend that people wanting to get into his work start with SYL's City, and Devin's solo work Ocean Machine:Biomech.

City is a nothing less than a overwhelming Holy S*** sledgehammer of a metal album (One of my top 3 of the 1990s) that no metal fan should be without.

Ocean Machine:Biomech is heavy overall, but more varied in it's approach. Spacey in a few parts, sheer power in others.


After than, I'd suggest Terria and SYL's Alien as the next stops on the Devin Townsend metallic mystery tour.

And as already mentioned, you'll want to check out 2009's Addicted!, which is the heaviest pop album in the universe. The production makes Def Leppard's Hysteria sound like Darkthrone.


The bottom line is that, which I like some of Devin's releases more than others, I have always found something interesting and worthy on every release he's put out.

Sorry, guys. It's hard to really point someone in the right direction with Devin. Yes, I love it all, but in terms of his solo stuff—it's probably fine to start anywhere, really. Hell, start on YouTube!

Strapping Young Lad is, of course, very heavy. If you don't dig that, don't check out his Physicist solo album. It's very similar.

But if I had to choose, I'd say start at the beginning and buy the Ocean Machine album.

Eyesore wrote:

But if I had to choose, I'd say start at the beginning and buy the Ocean Machine album.

That's where I started as well, and it's a great place to start. Doesn't he also have some ambient stuff?

EvyMetal wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

But if I had to choose, I'd say start at the beginning and buy the Ocean Machine album.

That's where I started as well, and it's a great place to start. Doesn't he also have some ambient stuff?

Sort of, yeah. Accelerated Evolution originally came with a three-track bonus called Project EKO. It's pretty much...well, here:



Guess he was trying out some new software and wrote three weird latter day Delerium-type tunes. Then he's got The Hummer and Devlab, which are both sort of ambient and weird. They're the kind of albums you listen to with good headphones while reading and falling asleep.

None are favorites of mine, but I do listen to them while writing. They're cool background music.

Thank you all very much. I will be checking it out most definitely.

For some reason, I love the Project EKO stuff. I really hope the Ghost album has some tracks in that vein. Devlab and The Hummer took me a while to get in to, but they're good for calming background music, certainly.