Australian fans have also been very fortunate to have had the man tour our shores very regularly over the years, and he is here once again this coming October.
Australia has always been a very strong market for Devin and his music, since way back in the late 90s when he recorded a STRAPPING YOUNG LAD live album here. He’s at a bit of a loss as to why we have been so good to him over the years, but he’s more than happy to run with it.
“I love it man,” he says, “Australia’s always been somewhere that’s been good for me, but also, I’ve been saying in these interviews all day, about how much I’m overwhelmed by the fact that I’m allowed to be able to keep making these weirdo records and coming down there.
“Australia’s been one of the best markets for me, ever,” he praises, “and I’ve been trying to figure out through these interviews as well, why that would be the case…maybe we just grew up with the same shit man, same sorts of TV shows, maybe it’s because we still have the queen on our money, maybe because Australia and Canada have the same sort of landmass to people ration, I don’t know what it is! But ultimately it’s great man, and I don’t take it for granted.”
The fact that every Devin album is so very different from the last one, begs the question what is Devin’s favourite Devin album? “Casualties,” he answers. The next one? “Yep, the next one,” he laughs, “Casualties is a record that is more in line with me, at this age, after all these experiences, than anything I’ve done recently. And it’s not because the other ones are dishonest, they just had an agenda. This one doesn’t.
“When I was doing the four (Devin Townsend Project) records, there was a point I was trying to make,” he explains, “when I was doing Epicloud I really had something I was trying to say with it. But with Casualties there’s none of that, it’s agenda-less, and I’ve just been poking away at it, and it’s almost done, to my surprise. And it sounds fuckin’ awesome! And there’s nothing about it that’s trying to convince anybody that they should listen to it, nothing about it is desperate. It’s almost embarrassing to say; almost everything I’ve done has that sense of urgency, maybe urgency instead of desperation, right?” He laughs, “but there really is this kind of like ‘LISTEN TO ME!’ thing going on with it.
“But with Casualties, when I listen to it, it’s really just a bunch of songs, when I think about who I am as a person, when I listen to Casualties it’s like ‘well that is (who I am)’ in a lot of ways.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
