What is it?

Unlike films, sequels in the guitar-gear world are often better than the originals, and that’s certainly the case with the new and notably improved Mooer Ocean Machine II.

It’s been about eight years since the Ocean Machine developed in collaboration with Devin Townsend made its debut, and while the Ocean Machine II maintains a similar dual-delay unit, reverb and looping effects foundation, it offers improved DSP algorithms, expanded specs, enhanced performance capabilities and better reliability.

One detail that didn’t change is the price, making the Ocean Machine II even more incredible value than its predecessor.

Usability and sounds

Like most sophisticated effects processors, the Ocean Machine II does have a bit of a learning curve, and reading the manual before you roll up your sleeves and get to work is highly recommended.

Having said that, it’s easy to find your way around thanks to the control knobs provided for the separate reverb and two delay sections. Each section has a nine-position rotary switch for selecting delay or reverb types plus four parameter control knobs – pre delay, decay, tone and mix for reverb; feedback, time, sweep and mix for the delays.

A large multi-color LCD, a rotary menu knob and front panel switches make it easy to tweak deeper parameters and function settings in fine detail.

Three footswitches provide stompbox-style performance ease and functionality. Depending on the selected mode, the switches can select the reverb and delay effects individually, provide bypass and preset up/down scrolling functions, control various looper functions or provide tap tempo functions for the reverb and delay effects individually.

Full-size MIDI thru and in jacks and a ¼-inch expression pedal jack further expand the unit’s control capabilities via optional external devices. A USB-C jack is a new addition that facilitates firmware updates.

The original Ocean Machine was an ambient music monster capable of generating universes of strange, beautiful, disturbing, hypnotic and intoxicating soundscapes. The new unit does the same, only the overall sound quality is even more lush and three-dimensional.

These are the kinds of sounds that used to require expensive studio gear costing tens of thousands of dollars but now are available in a pedal that costs the same price as a retrograde fuzz box made by an obnoxious hipster using primitive, low-tech components.

At its core, the Ocean Machine II is two standalone delay units and a reverb unit, but the sum is much greater than its individual parts thanks to the way it blends, morphs, distorts and manipulates those effects together. Users can place the effects in any order they please in series or parallel.

It excels at shimmer and resonance effects where long reverb tails swell like accompanying synth parts, but it can also generate hallucinatory delay effects that swell and recede in musically and rhythmically fascinating ways. The textures can range from silky smooth to the gnarliest gritty distortion you’ve ever heard.

The algorithms for the delays include standard digital, analog, tape and echo effects, but the real fun lies in the more colorfully named liquid, rainbow, crystal, low-bit and fuzzy algorithms.

The same goes for the reverb algorithms, which consist of room, hall, plate and spring reverbs plus the more adventurous dist-verb, fl-verb, filter, reverse and mod algorithms. Advanced modulation capabilities allow users to tweak these effects beyond oblivion.

Verdict

With the recording time of the looper section now expanded from a maximum of 44 seconds to 120 seconds, users can create more highly layered loops or sections that can form the foundation of an entire song.

Combined with the unit’s outrageous reverb and delay textures, the Ocean Machine II is like Frippertronics to the nth degree.

Guitar World verdict: Much more than a dual-delay/reverb/looper effect, the Mooer Ocean Machine II is a sophisticated ambient soundscape-generating device that is like an instrument unto itself, which can inspire hours of sonic exploration and composition creation.

Specs

Launch price: $299/£239/€269
Type: Ambient soundscape generator featuring reverb, delay, looper
Controls: Pre-Delay, Decay, Tone, Reverb Mix (reverb); Feedback, Time, Sweep, Delay Mix (delay A); Feedback, Time, Sweep, Delay Mix (delay B); Menu/Mix; Reverb algorithm; Delay A algorithm; Delay B algorithm
Connectivity: ¼-inch stereo Inputs and Outputs, ¼-inch TRS expression, MIDI thru, MIDI in, center negative DC input, USB-C
Bypass: True bypass and DSP bypass
Power: 9V DC (500mA)
Dimensions: 215 x 127 x 56 mm
Contact: Mooer Audio

Hands-on videos

Mooer Audio

The Pedal Collaborative

Guitar Interactive Magazine

• Mooer Audio GE150 review

PowerNerd opens to the exhilarating sound of Devin Townsend in full-bore maximalist mode – but the record soon takes a left turn. The intensity remains but is trained elsewhere, after the Canadian prog-metal maverick was blindsided by tragedy while writing the album.

“The process of making it was so complicated on a personal level,” he says. “We went through a bunch of things as a family that were very upsetting, and so what started as a straightforward party record ended up being this very strange record about death.”

He admits: “The whole thing kicked my ass, man. I think I’ve just been so divorced from emotions for so much of my life; then finally we had a couple of experiences that you can’t run from, and you can’t bury your head in the sand. You have to deal with them.”

Without offering detail, Townsend says grief and loss overwhelmed him to the point where the project was nearly abandoned. A cup of coffee was one of the reasons why it wasn’t.

“When I was really deep in the depression of it somebody came by and said, ‘Hey, you look like you could use a coffee!’” he says. “We went went out for a coffee and I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, it’s funny how the process of grieving also includes that resolution.’”

That was when the pendulum of emotion began to swing back the other way. “The theme is essentially the process of loss,” he says. “And the process of grief has stages, whether or not stages include acceptance or anger, resolution, or whatever. At the end of that process, it’s another day.”

Having opened PowerNerd with an anthem promising empowerment through metal, Townsend finishes it with the screwball surrealism of Ruby Quaker. In between you’ll find find wall-of-sound quasi-orchestral soundscapes plus melodies that modulate between the ecstatic and the elegiac. Throughout, the industrial power of Townsend’s electric guitar maintains the sense of awe and grandeur.

PowerNerd is proof there are other ways to give a song a boost besides a guitar solo. That album will be followed by The Moth, Axolotl, and Ruby Quaker, to complete a tetralogy about death and rebirth – and Townsend uses every musical trick he knows to take us through that process.

You said a while back that abstract loops were your new obsession. Do those appear on on PowerNerd?

“I’d been writing abstract loops and documenting certain melodic things; just trying to sort of wrap my head around what this period of work entailed. PowerNerd ended up being this record that consisted of the more melodic ideas from during that period.

“I might wake up in the morning, put on my Pro Tools system, write whatever comes into my mind, and then I document it. So there’s a folder full of commercial things; a folder full of complex, orchestral things; abstract or straightforward things. Once I had the opportunity to start to compile those things into an identity, PowerNerd ended up being a lot more linear.”

Dealing with grief, loss, and everything like that is not just about music. But those feelings end up in the music whether you like it or not.

“The only thing that I can draw from is personal experience – and the experiences of making this record really sideswiped me, man. It was really emotionally intense in a way that I hadn’t been prepared for. The visceral nature of all of a sudden being confronted with, frankly, 52 years of repressed emotions was really overwhelming.

“One of the things I found most interesting was when I got to a point where I said, ‘I can’t finish this.’ But we pushed through it. I guess if there’s any definition of the term ‘PowerNerd,’ it’s getting through the damn record, right?”

So anyway, back to guitars, what gauge of strings did you use?

“[Laughs] Ten through 52, man!”

But, seriously, when you talk about drawing on those experiences, it leads to different artistic choices. There is a blazing solo on PowerNerd because it needs one. That kind of solo would not make sense on Gratitude.

“It’s not deliberate, but I think that the decisions you make when you’re in a frame of mind will contribute to choices like that. The decisions you make are all based on your frame of mind. The idea, for example, of lead guitar is, by nature, there’s focus put on it and during this period I just didn’t want any focus to be on me.

“Even when there is a solo, like on Goodbye, it’s mixed as though it’s playing in the room next door. There’s a distance in that production choice that reflects the theme of the song. I was just like, ‘It needs a guitar solo, but I have no desire for it to be like a November Rain video,’ you know?”

Even while you’re guided by your state of mind, there’s still emotional logic – how and what you play have to follow that logic to bring the audience along.

“That’s it exactly. A lot of the decisions on album order and the lyrical slant – changing certain words on a subtle level – are all based on trying to guide the experience in a way that accurately summarizes the moment.

“That’s why I put Ruby Quaker at the end of the record. It was meant to end with Goodbye, but the emotional intensity of Ruby Quaker left me feeling blown apart. To leave an audience in that way is a very conscious decision.”

And here was me thinking you wrote Ruby Quaker after taking brown acid and listening to the Clancy Brothers…

“I wish! I wish I could rationalize that in my 50s, man. I can’t afford the time for the comedown!”

You wrote the music for PowerNerd in 11 days, but the lyrics took some more time.

“At one point I recognized, ‘The lyrics I’ve written for this are now wildly inappropriate, considering what I’m going through with my life.’ As an artist, you’ve got to be willing to listen to what what’s going on. If you’re able to say, ‘Listen, I’m struggling…’ that’s gonna be more relatable to an audience than than trying to pretend you have answers.

“No one fucking has answers! It’s insane. Any time I see people trying to sell books on how one should live their life, I think the arrogance is shocking.”

Did these themes of death and loss shape all four records?

“It did. It’s not like you have a flash of inspiration and then the entirety of the process is laid before you. I was able to define it early – but what it ends up being and the ways in which it may change is a constant process of going down rabbit holes. It’s like trying to find a light switch in the dark.”

Can the process of searching for sounds that express an emotional epiphany have its own therapeutic quality?

“Maybe. Because any catharsis that I’ve felt from writing music is only to do with the fact that – as a result of the process – I’ve managed to face or work through things. None of the actual act of making a record is much more than pragmatic, really. But I do feel that the result of putting all that pragmatism into one place can yield an emotional experience that, in turn, is cathartic.”

Some of the sounds on this record are incredible. What did you use?

“A number of things! I used the Framus, the Kiesel, the Aristides [all three being Townsend signature models], the Fractal, the Helix, and the Quad Cortex. I used Bogren Digital plugins. I used a KSR head. I hooked up with an LA speaker company, Kii Audio, for staggering speakers that were actually so revealing that I found it difficult to mix.”

What were the sessions like?

“PowerNerd was a fairly straightforward process in terms of the recording. I used a DI and a Fractal while I was tracking the guitars; and when I was referencing what I was doing I was using a DI and then the Bogren Digital Rev C, which I thought was a really cool, quick way to get a good heavy guitar sound.

“But then I took those stems and I sent them to KSR Amplifiers, who’d very kindly built me an amplifier to try. They reamped it at their place, and what ended up going on to the record was a combination of these digital and analog sounds. I was very satisfied with it.

“In terms of actual gear, there’s always little things that you bring into a process, a new plug-in or something. But PowerNerd felt like a more military recording scenario, where it’s like you’ve got two days to rehearse, you’ve got two days to record… I didn’t spend time overthinking it.”

• PowerNerd is out now via InsideOut.

Mooer and Devin Townsend have revived their sonic partnership for an updated iteration of the Ocean Machine pedal, which stacks a reverb, delay, and looping effects for “lush, ambient atmospheres”.

The prog mastermind loves stacking delay pedals and any other effects units that can send his guitar tones into dreamlike states, and so, like its predecessor, two independent delay modules sit at the heart of the Ocean Machine II.

Here, household delay types such as digital, tape, and echo are joined by the more abstract options like galaxy, crystal, and rainbow. These are in turn complimented by a “high-fidelity reverb module” which has nine flavors and a shimmer effect for extra kicks.

Further still, each delay and reverb can be frozen in time, resulting in droning textures that Mooer says are “particularly impressive considering the pedal’s DSP upgrades”.

On the pedal’s looper side, its initial 44-second loop time has been extended to 120 seconds – that's a 172% increase, if you don’t have a calculator handy.

The feature can be used in conjunction with its LCD screen and 12 control knobs, with four for each delay and reverb module. This allows players to easily adjust their parameters in ‘Play Mode’. Three footswitches boast dominion over those modules and can be used for general navigation, including tap tempo controls, looper interfacing, and preset selecting.

Presets can be stored in the pedal’s 24 available slots, with each footswitch offering its own bank of eight slots.

Townsend has accentuated the pedal’s versatility by pushing for a programmable parallel and serial effect chain hybrid, meaning the order of its effects can be personalized for “endless creative possibilities”.

A host of new improvements center around its live performance and experimental abilities. MIDI connectivity makes the Ocean Machine II far more usable than its older brother, as does its newly devised expression pedal compatibility via a TRS cable.

It can also team up with Mooer’s F4 wireless footswitch for more detailed mapping of presets and other features. Finally, a USB-C port makes firmware updates a doddle.

Beyond that, full stereo inputs and outputs, adjustable global EQ settings, and true bypass and DSP (buffered) bypass options are also extended to its users.

“Ocean Machine II brings higher quality delay and reverb algorithms, augmented looping support, and various updated connections to Devin Townsend’s original device,” says Mooer. “The pedal is engineered to withstand the rigors of touring, allowing guitars to bring their special creations and atmospheric drones to the stage.”

The pedal augments Devin's love for digital amps – “When you ask people about their favorite amp, the acceptable responses are always the cork-sniffin’ ones. If it’s an Axe-Fx, people go, ‘That’s sacrilege,’” he says.

Check out Mooer for the full Ocean Machine II scoop.

In related Mooer news, it has stuffed a pedalboard's worth of effects and futuristic features into its next-gen intelligent guitar, the M810.

NAMM 2024: As practically every manufacturer jumps on the modeling amp bandwagon, with Kemper’s floor modeler the latest in a long line, a greater onus is put upon the FRFR cabinet market. Now, Laney has teamed up with Devin Townsend to deliver the LFR-412, the world’s first 4x12 FRFR cabinet, and it goes mighty loud.  

FRFR speakers – which stands for full-range, flat response – are built to handle whatever tone or frequency you throw into them. With a neutral output that simulates the signature chain with near-perfect accuracy, they’re perfect partners in crime for modeling amps, from the Quad Cortex to the Fractal Axe-Fx.

That’s why they’ve partnered with manic musical genius, Devin Townsend, who has toured with both Kemper and Axe-Fx units as part of his live rig.

The LFR-412 features Laney’s LA⋅IR Advance Impulse Response technology, which uses 56bit FIR filters for crystal clear cabinet emulation.

As part of the design process, Laney’s partners at HH Acoustics were commissioned to design the cabinet’s HH Black Series 12” woofers to work alongside its LaVoce compression driver. This suite of drivers makes for an ultra-low-noise cabinet, even when cranked at silly volumes.  

Devin Townsend worked with Laney’s UK design team to ensure that the LFR-412 would cut the mustard. He’s beyond proud of the result, stating “I truly believe it’s a game changer”.

It follows on from his appearance, alongside John Petrucci and Tosin Abasi, on Rick Beato's YouTube channel back in July. The quartet of guitarists discussed what modeling amps don't do as well as amps yet, with this latest cabinet helping solve the issue outlined, namely the experience of playing a live amplifier.

A host of IRs will be provided by Laney artists, available via a free sidekick app for nitty gritty tone-tweaking. Taking that one step further, however, there’s USB connectivity for players to load in their choice of IRs. By housing the IR within the cabinet, valuable processing power can be freed up within the player’s digital rig, meaning they can cram even more effects into their signal chain with greater creative freedom.

Laney, whose artist roster includes Tony Iommi, Billy Corgan – who is looking for a new co-guitarist – and Guthrie Govan has made the bold statement saying the LFR-412 is a “REAL Solution for players using a digital rig”. Caps lock n’ all.  

For amp-head users, the 4x12 has been the quintessential cab of choice for decades. Until now, FRFR cabinets have never packed so much power.

At 2,600 watts and producing SPL levels of 139dB, the LFR-412’s output falls a mere 1db short of that of a jet plane during take-off. Fear not, though, as it dwarfs the 129.5db Manowar clocked during their record-breaking 1994 show in Hannover.

That also makes it louder than a Formula 1 car at full throttle (130db), fireworks (120db) and a parent when their child has misbehaved (unknown, but terrifying).

Guitar World can’t wait for the day an amp comes along that can drown out the ear-splitting sonics of a sperm whale (230db).

“We wanted to give today’s players the chance to really experience the iconic look and the feel of the movement of air of a 4x12, even when using their modelers,” says Laney.

“This droolworthy powerhouse is packed full of additional features and powerful output options. In short, the LFR-412 does the heavy lifting and are redefining the standard that players should expect from their digital rigs.”

Laney has debuted another first at NAMM this year, releasing its new BCC Ironheart tube amps alongside a matching plugin for the first time.

You can keep up to date with all the latest gear releases ahead of NAMM 202 via our exhaustive guide to the latest NAMM 2024 news.

To discover more about the Laney FR-412, head to Laney Amps.

John Petrucci, Tosin Abasi and Devin Townsend form the line-up for a dream prog metal guitarist roundtable in Rick Beato’s latest interview – and they offer the most insightful discussion on the 'digital modelers versus real amps' debate we've heard in a long time.

The three guitarists are currently in the final throes of a tour together as part of Dream Theater’s travelling prog metal festival Dreamsonic and stopped in to chat with the YouTube veteran. As you might expect, the conversation inevitably turns to tone – and, in particular, the limitations of digital products.

“The biggest challenge for the digital products is not the tone,” says Petrucci [around 34 mins]. “It's not the things like gain and overdrive and stuff like that, it's how the amplifier physically pushes air through the speaker, it's the feel thing… It's all happening very randomly, nothing happens the same.”

In particular, it’s what Abasi – who has recently equipped his backline with Bad Cat tube amps – later labels the ‘chaos element’ that is missing when it comes to a modeler’s output. 

“If you're playing through an amp with a lot of distortion and you play an A [chord] and then you play that same A again, the way that it interacts with the amplifiers components and comes out the cabinet and the speakers is totally different,” explains Petrucci.

“It's a totally different moment in time, but with the digital products they can never randomize that again… That's always the missing piece to me: that randomness and the way that things are happening in physical space that you can't reproduce.”

Petrucci, perhaps unsurprisingly given their close working relationship, credits Neural DSP with getting closest, but posits the solution to the random element may lie in AI.

Abasi, agrees, for the most part – later labelling the “violent” experience of a loud amp as “quintessential to the electric guitar”. However, he also notes the present period is “a golden age” for guitar software and notes that, sometimes, the reverse is true – that players who have developed their ear on optimized modeling tech can sometimes find the real-life alternative disappointing.

“In the early Fractal days, it'd be idealized versions of like a 5150 or like a Mark IV,” recalls Abasi. “And then you get the real amp and you don't sound as good, because it's all compressed in the modeler… so, the chaos thing you were describing, where there's an unpredictability [that can play against you]. There's a life to real amps – for better or worse – meaning they're harder to play through in some ways.”

Petrucci says he increasingly believes the answer ultimately lies in focusing on IR developments and speaker/room emulation – as evidenced by his recent Tonemission IR launch. However, even that still has its limitations, as Townsend astutely notes. 

“Your IR is pretty much 99% of what you had in your rig,” observes Townsend to Petrucci. “So then I guess the experience of playing the live amplifier, it's an intangible part of that process that you find inspiring?”

“It is inspiring,” reflects Petrucci. “It's really inspiring because it's reactive. Everything digital is recreating something. They're all moments in time but real life is happening right now. So [with] real amplifiers, everything's random: how the notes interact, what's going to happen… the resonance of the stage and the room, the house, and how loud it is. Those are all things that are unpredictable… [they’re what] make it reckless and rock and roll and cool, and it makes your performance different every single night.”

Watch the full fascinating interview above and subscribe to Beato’s channel on YouTube for more tonal geekery, before you bone up on Petrucci’s new software brand – its first launch replicates his exact signal chain.

Devin Townsend is one of today’s chief champions of digital guitar equipment, flying the flag for technological developments through his use of various amp and effects modeling units.

In the past, he’s also launched passionate defenses of such gear, once telling Total Guitar that he’d go down the guitar amp rabbit hole only to “come back to digital because it’s clean and I can control it”.

Now, in a conversation with Line 6, the metal maestro has once again voiced his support for digital gear, and suggested it would have also been keenly utilized by pioneering players of the past. 

“I’ve got a buddy who’s extremely disparaging about technology, and his go-to line is always, ‘Well, the Beatles didn’t need that,’” Townsend noted. “And my answer is always, ‘Dude, they didn’t have that.’ 

“If they’d had this technology with the extremely forward-thinking nature of what they were doing at the time, how can you imagine for a second that they wouldn’t have utilized it?” he continued.

“It’s absurd. People often doggedly hold onto the aesthetics of gear that they love because it’s got much more to do with their memories of it than it does with any sort of practical, contemporary application.”

Rather than getting weighed down with such emotional connections to gear, Townsend is instead solely concerned with sound: “For me, what it really comes down to is do you like the sound you’re getting right now? And if you do, there you go.”

It’s a valid point. After all, the Beatles changed the sound of rock music forever with their innovative approach to the genre, and made guitar the world’s most popular instrument.

With that in mind, there’s no telling what the band would have made of the Line 6 Helix or Kemper Profiler had they had access to such gear in their prime.

Townsend’s comments are further justified by Paul McCartney’s continued use of modern technology in music to this day: earlier this month, Macca revealed the final Beatles record had been finalized with the help of artificial intelligence.

Townsend’s comments contribute to a wider revisionist conversation around digital gear. His discussion of the Beatles has echoes of John Mayer’s own observation of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which he said would have also made use of modeling tech had it been available at the time.

“We actually used a Fractal in some places,” Mayer told Guitar World while discussing his ‘80s throwback album, Sob Rock. “Because as much as I was thinking, ‘What would I have done then?’ I was also thinking, ‘What would they have done now?’ 

“And if somebody had walked a Fractal into the Thriller sessions? You would have heard a Fractal all over that record.”

It’s been a fairly hectic week on the modeling front. On Monday (June 26), Iron Maiden’s Dave Murrary announced he’d be swapping out his Marshall JPM-1s – which he’d used for around three decades – for a Fractal Axe-Fx III Turbo.

Elsewhere in the digital gear realm, Eric Johnson – another gear traditionalist – revealed he’s been experimenting with the Neural DSP Quad Cortex, and refused to rule out the possibility it could replace his current rig in the future.

Last Friday (June 16), Dream Theater kicked off their Dreamsonic 2023 tour, for which they’ve recruited the supporting services of Animals As Leaders – and it wasn’t long before the two bands’ resident electric guitar heroes were sharing the stage.

On paper, a tour that includes both John Petrucci and Tosin Abasi is absolutely ripe for awe-inspiring guitar action, and those in attendance on the first night got exactly that when Abasi joined Dream Theater for a set-closing rendition of The Spirit Carries On.

With their two Ernie Ball Music Man models in tow, the pair were also joined by Abasi’s fellow support act Devin Townsend, who opted to abstain from guitar duties, instead sacrificing the six-string spotlight to Trooch and Abasi.

Abasi and his radical Kaizen model, which he developed with EBMM back in 2022, spend much of the time locked into rhythm duties, while Petrucci – with his guitar “high and nerdy” and knee up on a foot rest – takes his Majesty signature guitar for a spin during the song’s guitar solo.

The Abasi Concepts creator soon gets in on the lead action, though, sonically aligning his own outro melody with that of Trooch’s, resulting in a goosebump-inducing harmonized exchange between the pair.

It turned out to be a hair-raising finale to the 11-song setlist, which had previously seen Dream Theater perform songs such as Solitary Shell, The Alien, Sleeping Giant and The Count of Tuscany.

Indeed, the Kaizen proved to be the perfect sonic foil for the Majesty, both of which were wielded with utmost efficiency as their respective players squeezed out lashings of vibrato and feel for the mesmerizing curtain closer.

“Touring with @dreamtheaterofficial is sick enough but getting to share the stage, harmonizing with @johnpetrucciofficial is beyond words,” Abasi wrote on Instagram after the show. “You guys gotta make to sure come out to this tour.”

Unsurprisingly, a handful of guitar stars were just as enamored with the team-up as fans were: “Ahhhhh yesssssss this is so amazing,” commented Nita Strauss. “Beautiful,” wrote Rick Beato.

Fortunately for those with an eye on attending a Dreamsonic 2023 show – and for those eagerly following developments online – the whole performance wasn’t just a one-off. According to Setlist.fm, Abasi and Townsend have both featured for the finale for all three shows so far.

Now we just need to see Trooch cameo on an Animals As Leaders track and take a swing at some thumping lines. There are still 26 shows left of Dreamsonic 2023, so never say never.

For a list of upcoming tour dates, head over to Dream Theater’s website.

Devin Townsend’s six-string style is heralded by fans of progressive music – and the guitarist himself has even admitted that he’s pretty good at soloing, even if he doesn't love doing so – but there’s one aspect of guitar playing that the Canadian has largely shied away from in his music.

Namely, Townsend recently revealed in an interview that he made the conscious decision to give up shredding – despite having an affinity with its associated techniques as an aspiring young guitar player – because of one standout experience with Steve Vai.

Speaking to Ultimate Guitar, Townsend recalled how witnessing Vai – one of the guitar world’s most virtuosic shredders – at the peak of his powers was enough to deter him from embarking on the road to shred guitar stardom. 

When asked what made his playing style veer away from technically orientated music and why he dropped the dream of becoming a shredder, Townsend simply replied, “I got a gig singing for Steve Vai.”

Elaborating on what is a perfectly understandable answer in itself, he added, “When I was a kid, I remember learning how to sweep and tap and all this. Then I moved to LA, I was 19 years old, 20 years old, and I was sitting beside Steve Vai in his studio. 

“I was so fortunate,” Townsend continued. “And I was watching him play and I was like, you know, it's like you're in a wrestling match and you have to tap out. I was like, 'You know what? I think I'm gonna write my songs. He can be the guitar God.' Because he is.”

"I was watching him play and I was like, 'Nah, I'm good. I'll play rhythm.'”

As for what specifically prompted Townsend to abandon his quest to perfect his shredding chops, he cited the level of discipline required to master the ability, as well as its incompatibility with what interested him musically, as key driving factors.

Townsend continued, “By watching him and seeing the level of discipline that he had to put into being that guitar player, I realized that wasn't my goal. As I got older, I started realizing that my way of writing, you know, writing with the weather, writing with the environment, is much more in line with my truth, than woodshedding and being faster than everybody else. 

“When I was a kid, if I'd seen some of these dudes that are playing now, I would've been like, 'Holy shit, man.' But that being said, I don't want to play like that. It doesn't interest me musically.”

In other Townsend news, the prog-metaller recently sat down for a conversation with Guitar World, during which he revealed why he thinks Gibson Les Pauls don’t particularly flatter him, and why digital amps are better than analog ones.

On that latter point, he offered, “When you ask people about their favorite amp, the acceptable responses are always the cork-sniffin’ ones like the Dumble or some Super Overdrive that’s been hidden away since 1956. And you’re allowed to say that, because that’s sexy. But if you go around telling people it’s an Axe-Fx, people go ‘That’s sacrilege!’

“When producers ask me to re-do it through some hissy old amplifier, I’ll go down that rabbit hole but I always come back to digital because it’s clean and I can control it,” Townsend continued. “What people find problematic with the Axe-Fx is that it gives you all the options to make something fantastic or monumentally shit. It’s up to the user.”

Devin Townsend has come a long way since he emptied his bowels inside Steve Vai’s guitar case. Back then, in the early ’90s, Devin was barely out of his teens and had just scored his big break singing on Vai’s album Sex and Religion. But as a guitar player himself, he felt overawed in the presence of the virtuoso – and expressed his feelings in the worst way imaginable.

What’s amazing is that he and Vai have remained good friends in all the years since then. And as Devin says now, that ghastly prank was really a backhanded compliment. “I was fortunate enough to work with Steve early on and realised he was so much better than me,” he admits. “And if one can’t articulate your discontent in an elegant way, then your options are mainly just shitting on things, I think!”

Toilet humour aside, Devin has much to talk about right now as he hooks up with Total Guitar via Zoom, seated in a neon-lit home studio that looks more like the control room you’d find on a spaceship. In his new album Lightwork, the Canadian prog metal mastermind delivers another thrillingly eclectic collection of songs that force the listener to engage as a direct consequence of their left-field creative detours. 

You’re never quite sure where this rollercoaster of noise will take you. And this, Devin says, can be attributed to doing the most obvious thing any musician can - something we’re all guilty of forgetting after many years of practice...

“This is going to sound as pretentious as it feels to say, but often when I’m playing I have to remind myself to listen to what I’m playing,” he explains. “That sounds absurd, right?! Because of course you can hear yourself. But there’s a slight but significant distinction between hearing and listening. Hearing it, at least in my case, means you end up focusing on technique. 

“When I’m listening, however, I’m thinking about what note should come next rather than muscle memory automatically going to the shapes I always go to. I might realise I don’t need that other note. I get less hung up on being perfect, because ultimately I’m not perfect, so why be so concerned about that?

“Oftentimes, the best ideas come when I slow down my thoughts enough to be with the patterns I’m playing. That’s when I start participating in sound instead of going through the motions that result in sound.”

On the subject of his tools to create those sounds, he explains he’s fortunate enough to work with several companies who help bring his otherworldly ideas to life. His main instrument, the Stormbender by German company Framus, takes inspiration from the flagship Gibson Les Paul Custom, though with a few tweaks and customisations to assist with Devin’s modern metallic assault. 

“I still occasionally bring out my white Les Paul Custom,” he says, revealing it was bought for him by a group of friends for his 40th birthday. “But the problem with Les Pauls is they look shit on me! On some people they look fantastic. When you see Joe Perry or Slash holding a Les Paul you think, ‘Damn, that’s a match made in heaven!’ I already look like a dork so if you add a guitar that’s too small for my stature, it looks awful!”

He continues: “The Framus design was about replicating that sound but with a shape closer to something I could get behind. One major difference is the scale length. My Framus is 25” because I mainly play in open tuning with 10-52 gauge strings. The Gibson scale length would feel a little shaky tuned down like that. The pickups are my signature set that I designed with Larry Fishman some years ago, which have a bit more chewiness and less compression compared to the regular Fluence Moderns.”

Then there’s his Empath acoustic, made by Vancouver-based company Prestige, which also feature Fishman pickups, built with a spruce top and mahogany sides. There’s a lot of music in them, Devin says, which as he rightly points out is the true test of any guitar. 

More recently, he’s partnered up with Kiesel for a headless instrument that is used exclusively for ambient tones. The other guitar heard on the new record is a Sadowski Telecaster, sporting a DiMarzio humbucker and a Seymour Duncan singlecoil in the bridge.

Though the electrics were initially fed through old Mesas and Marshalls at the insistence of Lightwork co-producer Garth Richardson, Devin ended up reverting back to his favourite amp – after all, it was the one he knew would always get the job done. And before he elaborates any further, he points out he’s aware it’s a controversial choice...

“It’s funny, when you ask people about their favourite amp, the acceptable responses are always the cork-sniffin’ ones like the Dumble or some Super Overdrive that’s been hidden away since 1956,” he laughs. “And you’re allowed to say that, because that’s sexy. But if you go around telling people it’s an Axe-Fx, people go ‘That’s sacrilege!’ 

“My whole workflow includes tailoring sounds to suit the music I write. When I’m done, the sounds I’ve created are perfect for that song. When producers ask me to re-do it through some hissy old amplifier, I’ll go down that rabbit hole but I always come back to digital because it’s clean and I can control it. What people find problematic with the Axe-Fx is that it gives you all the options to make something fantastic or monumentally shit. It’s up to the user.”

It doesn’t take long to work out that going against the grain, ignoring trends and forging his own path has been key to Devin Townsend’s success. 

Mixing elements of progressive rock, heavy metal and classical music into his own bombastic concoctions has allowed him to exist independently as a songwriter, in a place he describes as a carte blanche for his mind. Even the way he tunes the majority of his guitars says a lot about his creative process – he knows what works and simply has no desire to deviate.

“I haven’t been in standard tuning since the beginning, pretty much,” he grins. “I’m usually in open C, which harkens back to my love of Led Zeppelin III. From the lowest string to the highest, the strings are tuned CGCGCE. It’s basically a C major chord, though sometimes I might change the key and tune to B, or whatever. My whole style has been largely informed by that.

“The great thing about this tuning is that all the strings function in the same way. Say if I want to play a major line or arpeggio, I’d play the 5th, 7th and 9th frets. If I want minor, it would be 5th, 7th, 8th. There’s a cool droney thing about playing in open. You can use a lot of pedal tones and when you combine that with the amount of echo I use, it can get really hypnotic. Basically, it makes things sound way more complex than they actually are!”

• Lightwork is out now via Inside Out Music.

For the last few years, eclectic electric guitar virtuoso Devin Townsend has been a Framus man, leaning primarily on his signature guitar, the Stormbender.

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, Townsend revealed that the Stormbender was designed to channel the Gibson Les Paul Custom, with aesthetics and build more along the lines of the prog-metal maestro's taste. 

“I still occasionally bring out my white Les Paul Custom,” Townsend said, “But the problem with Les Pauls is they look shit on me! 

"On some people they look fantastic," the prog-metal maestro explained. "When you see Joe Perry or Slash holding a Les Paul you think, ‘Damn, that’s a match made in heaven!’ I already look like a dork so if you add a guitar that’s too small for my stature, it looks awful!” 

The Stormbender, Townsend explained to Total Guitar, was "about replicating that sound but with a shape closer to something I could get behind."

"One major difference is the scale length," Townsend said. "My Framus is 25” because I mainly play in open tuning with 10-52 gauge strings. The Gibson scale length would feel a little shaky tuned down like that. The pickups are my signature set that I designed with Larry Fishman some years ago, which have a bit more chewiness and less compression compared to the regular Fluence Moderns.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the ever-adventurous guitarist revealed why he – like many other tone hounds – has gone digital.

“It’s funny, when you ask people about their favorite amp, the acceptable responses are always the cork-sniffin’ ones like the Dumble or some Super Overdrive that’s been hidden away since 1956,” Townsend said with a laugh. “And you’re allowed to say that, because that’s sexy. But if you go around telling people it’s an Axe-Fx, people go, ‘That’s sacrilege!’ 

"My whole workflow," he continued, "includes tailoring sounds to suit the music I write. When I’m done, the sounds I’ve created are perfect for that song. When producers ask me to re-do it through some hissy old amplifier, I’ll go down that rabbit hole but I always come back to digital because it’s clean and I can control it. What people find problematic with the Axe-Fx is that it gives you all the options to make something fantastic or monumentally shit. It’s up to the user.”

To read the full interview with Townsend – which also covers his new album, Lightwork, his formative time with Steve Vai, alternate tunings and more – pick up a copy of the latest issue of Total Guitar via Magazines Direct.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past three years, it’s that everyone dealt with the pandemic in their own ways. Some artists wandered deep into the void and made their darkest records yet; some chose to embrace the calm and unlock their inner zen; some leaned into the chaos, or went ultra-pop as a form of escapism, or ignored the shifts in mood entirely, or chose not to make new records at all. Ever the man of a million thoughts, Devin Townsend couldn’t settle for just one option.

The omnipotent prog-metaller wrote hundreds of songs over the COVID era, siphoning material into different categories. The more chaotic songs were bundled into The Puzzle, while those a little more serene went into Snuggles. Both albums arrived last December, accompanied by films (and in the former’s case, a graphic novel), paving the way for one of Townsend’s all-time biggest musical epics: Lightwork. Coupled with an ancillary album of B-sides titled Nightwork, the ten-track opus follows Townsend on a sprawling journey through sound, as effervescent as it is profound.

With his sights set on touring it all throughout 2023, Australian Guitar caught up with Townsend to explore the mind-bending radiance of Lightwork.

What did you learn about yourself in the process of writing these songs?
That I didn’t have my shit together as much as I presented myself to. And I think that was really important for me, because I think that in a vacuum, it’s easy for us to to be all of these things that we’d like to be when everything’s okay – when there’s no war, no pandemic, no financial issues or health issues, or people suffering to certain degrees… It’s easy at that point to present yourself as this idealised version of what you’d like to be. But over the past two years, I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that who I actually am is a lot less like that. 

In certain scenarios, I reacted in ways that were surprising to me both in positive and negative ways. And for a while there, I was a little bummed. I was like, “Man, I wish I was more balanced than I clearly am.” But by the end of it, I was actually really thankful for that. Because to actually be honest with yourself is a real gift in a lot of ways. And how that manifested for me was just being a little easier on myself. Because for so many years, I’ve been a real perfectionist and really disciplined, but only on the surface – underneath, I was really hard on myself about a lot of things. 

But I’ve sort of made peace with that, like, “Dude, you are who you are, and you are where you are… And that’s cool.” It was really inspiring, but also kind of humbling in a way. It was good for me though, ultimately, to see myself for who I am as opposed to who I thought I was.

Do you find songwriting to be a helpful tool in helping you navigate the labyrinth that is your mind?
It’s a coping mechanism, for sure. I think it’s only recently that I recognised that function – and maybe a part of that [realisation] came from the Lightwork record. So much of what I do on social media, prior to releasing a record, is make apologies for it. Maybe there was part of me that was still attached to the fact that there’s a certain faction [of followers] out there who want me to be what I was in the past – whether that’s Strapping [Young Lad] or Empath or Deconstruction or Ocean Machine… 

I was always confused as to why I couldn’t maintain a degree of consistency throughout the records. But the things that inspire me and compel me [to write music] always seem to be so connected to what’s currently going on in my world. I always felt guilty because I’ve got an audience that has been super supportive, and I’m thinking, “Oh, it’s not like it was.” But then I think: perhaps the biggest thing I’ve got going for me as artistic collateral is less about consistency, or being heavy, or being this or that or some other thing, but more that it’s like… I’ve got no choice but to follow these things wherever they want to go. 

Once I started recognising that pattern, I was like, “Dude, why are you always apologising for this shit? You did your best!” And that’s the criteria that this art needs to have, above all other things. If I can truly say that I did my best, and I managed to create something that, in my mind, represents something that was important to me – that maybe other people can participate in – then we’re good. And to the people that want it to be something other than what it is… I mean, that sounds like a “you” problem. 

I think moreso with this album than ever, you’ve really mastered this equilibrium of energy and melancholy, where any one song can sound intense, but at the same time almost tranquil. How did you crack that?
I think you’re just tied to your nature, you know? It’s the same reason why dogs are weirded out by me and cats like me. I think I’m a pretty tranquil person, but [that tranquility] is mixed with this constant undercurrent of anxiety or intensity. And I think making peace with that was a big part of it. 

Going back to the personal revelations: I think it’s easy to chastise ourselves for not being what we’d like to be. Like, I’d love to be just totally zenned out, but I’m clearly not, right? I’ve clearly got lots of things going on in [my mind] that create this weird kind of thing. But I’m at peace with that. It’s okay to be chill, but also not chill. And so, as a reaction to who I am at any period in time, I don’t think about music at all – I just write. And there’s a guitar next to me right now, there are guitars on the wall over there… I’m always writing, and as a result of that, my songs go hand-in-hand with whatever’s going on.

Reading through the list of people you worked with on The Puzzle and Snuggles, it’s like a playbill of incredible guitarists, from Steve Vai to Plini to Markus Reuter… Did you link up with many heavy-hitters on Lightwork?
Mike Keneally played on Lightwork because I love the guy and he’s a good buddy, and I love the fact that he’s always down to play a solo. I’m a good guitar player, I think, I rarely want to play solos. I think that part of doing interviews, and having done this for so long, is that you’re always subject to the scrutiny of others, and people are able to assume that things like [not wanting to play solos] are indicative of a certain personality trait. Like, throughout the years – especially when I was less secure in myself than I am now – people would say, “Well, the reason why you don’t like playing solos is because you feel self-conscious.”

For a while there, I was like, “I wonder if that’s it.” But I think it might be more simple than that. It’s just like, “No, I just don’t really want to play solos.” That’s it, right? And it’s not like I won’t – look at Deconstruction, I played tonnes of solos all over that record – but I only play them when it feels important. And then if there’s a section that I feel needs a solo, and when I try it I’m just bored of everything I do, I’m fortunate to have all these really incredible players in my world. I can just call someone up and be like, “Man, I can’t come up with anything that doesn’t piss me off here. Could you try?”

Devin Townsend thrives on extremes. From his early ’90s breakthrough singing on Steve Vai’s Sex & Religion, to the brutalizing industrial death-thrash of Strapping Young Lad, to his coffee-centered prog opera Ziltoid the Omniscient, to the drone-heavy ambient daydream of last year’s Snuggles solo album, the Canadian eccentric isn’t known for staying in a specific lane for long. 

Townsend is just as predictably unpredictable on his 21st solo album, Lightwork, which may raise eyebrows from the metal faction of his fanbase over its grandiose, hard-swung power ballads (Lightworker), industrial biker rock (Dimensions) and cactus-scented, electro-acoustic strummers (Vacation).

“Sometimes people who aren’t familiar with my work assume I do these things to be provocative,” Townsend suggests of his many musical mood swings, “Like, ‘You know what would really throw a wrench in the works is if we do a dusty acoustic song.’ But it’s not that in the slightest.” The reason for the eclecticism is much simpler: Townsend just wants to try new things.

“It’s like eating steak all day. You wake up and have steak, and then have steak for lunch, dinner and before you go to bed. Man, don’t you get sick of meat after a while? Every now and then you have a big meaty meal, but other times you want some sherbet, or you have a cookie or eat a salad. Writing, for me, is the same – that’s just what I consider to be healthy, artistically.”

Townsend planned for Lightwork to be a straightforward, chill and ultimately optimistic-sounding affair. Structurally and harmonically, it often is. Behind the scenes, however, the record proved to be a challenge. 

While he began working on the record in early 2020, pandemic anxieties forced Townsend to pause the project and work through the chaos with his more free-form and moody The Puzzle. Later on, Lightwork sessions with producer Garth Richardson (Rise Against, Rage Against the Machine) were interrupted when a tree fell on the latter’s studio on the scenic Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, knocking out the electricity in the process. 

And even when Townsend thought he’d put the album to bed, he made a drastic, last-minute tracklist change this summer after finding out a song had to be scrapped over clearance issues.

“We had recorded this song called Honeybunch, which has this [melody] taken from Barbie Girl by Aqua,” he says, adding that his recontextualized take on the ’90s Europop hit also featured some funky guest fretwork from Nile Rodgers. “I thought the loophole was that if you re-record the sample, you could use it because it’s not their version. But it turns out that’s not the case!” 

Honeybunch may one day see the light of day, pending approval from Aqua. Its replacement on Lightwork is the decidedly chunkier Heartbreaker, a detuned outlier full of palm-muted riffery and prog-styled time shifts that had been intended to appear on Lightwork’s more experimental bonus disc, Nightwork. 

“It’s not the original vibe; however, on some level I think it makes it better for me,” he says of the sequencing shakeup, further noting, “I’m strangely thankful that at the last minute I got to complicate it a little bit.”

Whatever the direction, Townsend graced much of the record with his signature rainbow-coated Framus Stormbender, though he played a Sadowsky T-style for the out-of-phase constellation of bends he brings to Lightwork’s Heavy Burden. The record’s most empirically shredding solo, on Dimensions, comes courtesy of longtime collaborator Mike Keneally, whom Townsend gladly brought in to handle the lead.

“I don’t love playing guitar solos, but I think I’m good at them,” he says. “On the older records – [2011’s] Deconstruction, [2016’s] Transcendence or Ziltoid the Omniscient – there’s more ostentatious guitar parts on my side of things, but rarely do I think to myself, ‘Oh, this needs a solo.’ When I do, I usually do it [in the] first take.”

“My goal for a solo, rather than thinking ‘OK, what scale are we in?’ is to have the music crescendo with effort. So the solo, if I’m fortunate, is representative of that intent,” Townsend continues, concluding with pragmatic Zen, “And then [I] cut it and print it.”

• Lightwork is out now via Inside Out.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Ayron Jones – Filthy

What is it? We’ve long heralded Ayron Jones as Seattle’s next great guitar hope, and this new standalone single further cements that reputation. Co-written alongside Marti Frederikson (Ozzy Osbourne, Carrie Underwood) and Scott Stevens (Shinedown, Halestorm), Filthy’s raucous hooks and sludgy riffs are like a mashup of Alice in Chains and N.E.R.D. – and that’s a pretty potent combination in our book.

Standout guitar moment: Come for the groaning Jerry Cantrell bends, stay for the Prince-style middle eight vamps.

For fans of: Alice in Chains, N.E.R.D., Black Stone Cherry

– Michael Astley-Brown

Nita Strauss – Summer Storm

What is it? The second single from Strauss’ highly-anticipated second solo album, Summer Storm is the follow-up to last year’s Dead Inside, her acclaimed collaboration with Disturbed frontman David Draiman. In a recent interview, Strauss told Guitar World that this phenomenal tune “covers all the bases” of her guitar playing, and indeed it’s a fitting introduction to her versatility on the instrument.

Standout guitar moment: The brutal crunch of those riffs and Strauss’ explosive pentatonic outbursts are obviously impressive, but the strong, memorable and well-articulated melodies Strauss plays – which show how much of an influence Iron Maiden remains on this Iron Maidens veteran’s playing – reveal that not only is Strauss a great songwriter, she doesn’t need a singer to help her showcase that songwriting skill.

For fans of: Iron Maiden, John 5, DragonForce 

– Jackson Maxwell

State Champs – What’s My Age Again?

What is it? Mark Hoppus might have dispelled rumors of an imminent Blink-182 reunion with guitarist Tom DeLonge last month, but that hasn’t stopped NY’s finest pop-punk export State Champs from paying homage to the band’s classic lineup.

Off the back of their triumphant fifth studio album, Kings of the New Age – which arrived earlier this year – Derek DiScanio, Tyler Szalkowski, Ryan Scott Graham and Evan Ambrosio deliver a faithful take on one of the most iconic pop-punk tracks of all time, highlighting the timelessly universal appeal of a two-minute track now well over 20 years old.

Standout guitar moment: What's My Age Again?'s arpeggiated opening riff has the ability to make anyone feel as though they're skating down Sunset Strip with a bottle of ice-cold Mountain Dew. Good times.

For fans of: Blink-182, New Found Glory, Sum 41

– Sam Roche

Hedras – AI 

What is it? As one of today’s most prolific progressive instrumentalists, it’s a testament to Hedras’ razor-sharp creativity that every new release seems to outdo the last – both in terms of technical scope, melody and performance. His chops are always flawless, but in AI – described as “the premise of what Future Metal is” – Hedras particularly excels. The pinpoint lead passages sound effortless despite their sheer complexity, while the time signature-shifting exchanges – loaded with Polyphia-style riffing – install a healthy level of rhythmic uncertainty.

Standout guitar moment: If you wish to grasp Hedras’ instrumental abilities, you need only listen to the solo line at the 2:06 mark. It’s equal parts selective phrasing and adventurous noodling, and ends with a pretty unbelievable legato line.

For fans of: Polyphia, Manuel Gardner Fernandes, Octavision

– Matt Owen

Quicksand – Giving the Past Away

What is it? NYC post-hardcore royalty Quicksand’s latest single had the working title “Greatest Quicksand Song Ever”, so it’s something of a surprise to discover it was left off last year’s Distant Populations album. Released ahead of the band’s imminent tour with Clutch and Helmet, Giving the Past Away does indeed prove to be a celebration of everything Quicksand, namely big riffs and abrasive guitar sonics.

Standout guitar moment: Sure, the stop-start hooks are up front, but listen out for Walter Schreifels’ nonchalant ear-ripping harmonic stabs sprinkled throughout the track.

For fans of: Helmet, Fugazi, Clutch

– Michael Astley-Brown

MILES – Never Have I Ever (feat. Travis Barker)

What is it? The closing track from the debut EP of St. Louis-born, Los Angeles-based singer-rapper MILES. Like a pop-punk Whac-A-Mole, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker pops up once again for what seems like his 100th feature of the year so far, serving up groovy beats under an infectious arrangement of clean electric guitars and instantly catchy vocals.

Standout guitar moment: The opening riff that continues through the verses is straight-up good vibes, and makes us want to pick up a guitar and play along.

For fans of: KennyHoopla, Blink-182

– Sam Roche

“Captain” Kirk Douglas – We Can Be One

What is it? 7/8 isn’t the most obvious time signature for a ’70s-inspired get down, but longtime Roots guitarist “Captain” Kirk Douglas has never been one to go by the book, and this claustrophobic funk jam offers a tantalizing taste of his forthcoming second album.

Standout guitar moment: We Can Be One is a rich tapestry of tight single-note lines and syncopated wah stabs, with aching overdriven lead lines that add a cinematic flair to proceedings.

For fans of: The Fantastic Negrito, The Roots, The Meters

– Michael Astley-Brown

Cleopatrick – OK 

What is it? While making their way around North America with rock royalty Royal Blood, heavy alt-rock duo Cleopatrick took to their tour van to produce OK: their second single of 2022, which is big on rumbling riffs and “digitally abused” guitars. Produced with the goal of sounding like it was “recorded and produced using a sentient IBM computer from 2002”, OK is no nonsense, no frills rock at its finest – guttural guitar breakdowns, lo-fi licks and eardrum-rattling chords.

Standout guitar moment: OK was written with “no regard for the rules”, and while that rings true for the most part – peep those indecipherable sonic screams of the chorus – it’s the opening riff that gets our attention. A perfect aperitif for the ensuing mayhem.

For fans of: Royal Blood, The Pale White

– Matt Owen

Frankie Cosmos – Aftershook

What is it? The second single from Inner World Peace, the new album from Greta Kline’s beloved Frankie Cosmos project. Reflecting on the past with a touch of anxiety, Aftershook is a disarming guitar-pop tune that you can approach from a number of angles.

Standout guitar moment: Taken in context with its subject matter, Aftershook’s solo has a woozy, hall-of-mirrors like quality – mildly disorienting but fun all the same.

For fans of: Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, Alvvays

– Jackson Maxwell

Devin Townsend – Moonpeople

What is it? The first single from Townsend’s forthcoming 21st studio album – yes, you read that right – Lightwork. With such a wealth of musical material under his belt after decades in the business, Devin Townsend has set a high-bar for himself, but he vaults over it in spectacular fashion on the ethereally space-y Moonpeople.

While the track’s first half is devoid of electric guitar, HevyDevy injects the arrangement with some wide-panned palm-muted lines in its climactic second half, as well as some subtly placed clean leads as the track approaches gratifying conclusion.

Standout guitar moment: The enveloping cleans that decorate the track's outro highlight Townsend's penchant for subtler electric guitar playing, in addition to the heavier riffing he's built much of his career on.

For fans of: Opeth, Leprous, Dream Theater

– Sam Roche

The Amazons – There’s a Light 

What is it? Festival favorites and popular British indie rockers The Amazons are not far away from releasing their third studio album, and though fans probably didn’t need another reason to get hyped for the “anthem-packed” effort, There’s a Light will most definitely add to the anticipation. Blending ballad-y verses with speaker-smashing choruses underpinned by growling guitars and melodic percussion, the single further proves why The Amazons are one of today’s foremost indie guitar bands currently operating in the UK.

Standout guitar moment: It’s not a solo per se, but the interlude section that sees the vocals drop out in favor of some fuzzy, swelling six-string action is a particular highlight of the track. Definitely one for the live sets.

For fans of: Kings of Leon, Sundara Karma

– Matt Owen

Jen Majura says she’s “still in shock” after being removed from Evanescence last month.

“It’s three weeks now since I got the news, I’m still in this blurry, oblivious momentum,” the guitarist told Solar Guitars head honcho Ola Englund in a recent episode of his Coffee With Ola YouTube series. “I guess I’m still in shock, because [it’s like] after being married six years, all of a sudden you’re divorced.”

“You know me, I always try to find the positive in a situation,” she continued, “so every day, step by step – I’m not doing great yet – but every day I find little tiny things that I’m like, ‘Oh, actually this is good.’”

Majura was suddenly kicked out of Evanescence last month, with the band announcing a new touring lineup that sees long-serving bassist Tim McCord handling guitar and Emma Anzai of Sick Puppies on bass guitar.

“It has been a very special chapter in the band with our dear friend Jen Majura, but we have decided it’s time to go our separate ways,” the band wrote in a statement upon her departure. “We will always love her and support her, and can’t wait to see what she does next! We are so grateful for the good times and great music we made all around the world together.”

Majura subsequently issued a statement on social media clarifying that her exit was not her decision. “I have no hard feelings against anybody and I wish Evanescence all the best,” she wrote. “I am allowed to carry beautiful memories of these past years. I am grateful.”

But in the new interview with Ola Englund, she dives deeper into how the firing affected her.

“Honestly, I was cleaning my apartment, and I got the phone call,” she recalls. “And first of all, I was like, ‘Is this a bad joke?’ And I remember, after I got the news, I hung up... I just [laid] there on the floor, staring at the ceiling, wondering what that was [going on], and looking over to my suitcase that I had already started packing, because I was two weeks from going out on the road until pretty much the end of the year.”

But, of course, when you can play like Majura and have been in such a globally recognized band, word travels fast when you become available. Majura says she’s had offers to play in other bands since leaving Evanescence, but adds that she’s not at the stage of accepting any of them.

“I would like to consider [the offers], but not now, not yet,” she says. “Because I feel like it would not be a nice move... I’m still processing. I’m not ready to jump into the next marriage right now.

“To be honest, what I wanna do right now is, first of all, focus on me and my music again… What I want right now is reconnect with myself and feel and hear and play my music again. And who knows? The plan is, so far – you heard it here first – I’m gonna write my third solo album.”

And while any original material is yet to materialize, Majura says she’s written a song inspired by Devin Townsend, titled Testicles, of all things.

“I was teaching at my music school and driving back home. I swear, it was late at night, and you could see the trees on the side of the street, and they were like rainbow colors,” she explained. “I'm listening to Devin's voice and I see rainbow trees and I am like, 'Okay, this is it. That's it, you're losing your mind.' And then I went back home and I thought about how cool it would be to write about testicles.”

Majura described the quasi sci-fi reincarnation theme behind the song, about being born anew to discover she had in fact not lost her mind. 

It’s unclear at this stage if Majura has recorded Testicles in any capacity, but who knows, perhaps it'll feature on Majura’s teased third solo album.

During a time defined by stay-at-home orders, movie marathons and a whole lot of nothing, Devin Townsend has kept busy. He’s raised more than $100,000 for Covid relief through home studio live video concerts, created the soundtrack for a new children’s TV show and announced a new project, the Devolution Series.

The latter – which he describes as “a grouping of oddities and interesting material that I would like people to hear, but don’t necessarily want to present as a ’major release’” – received its first installment earlier in the year, and now Hevy Devy has hit us with a second dose, this time entitled Galactic Quarantine.

It comprises virtual live versions of many of Townsend’s most notable tracks, including Hyperdrive!, Spirits Will Collide and Aftermath. Recorded in 2020 in various places around the world, Galactic Quarantine acts as a replacement for the Covid-affected Empath Vol 2 European Tour, and other cancelled summer festivals.

While Galactic Quarantine doesn’t drop until June 25, 2021, you can check out its first taster – footage of Townsend performing Aftermath – below.

Townsend comments: “I am currently deep in the writing of my new projects and am very excited to be doing so. Thanks for facilitating my ability to do that, and I hope you enjoy the Devolution Series."

Upon its release, Devolution Series #2 – Galactic Quarantine will be available as limited CD and Blu-ray digipak, double LP (including the album on CD) and as a digital album. Pre-order is available now.

Check out the tracklisting for Devolution Series #2 – Galactic Quarantine below:

1. Velvet Kevorkian (Virtually Live 2020)
2. All Hail The New Flesh (Virtually Live 2020)
3. By Your Command (Virtually Live 2020)
4. Almost Again (Virtually Live 2020)
5. Juular (Virtually Live 2020)
6. March Of The Poozers (Virtually Live 2020)
7. Supercrush! (Virtually Live 2020)
8. Hyperdrive (Virtually Live 2020) 
9. Stormbending (Virtually Live 2020)
10. Deadhead (Virtually Live 2020) 
11. Aftermath (Virtually Live 2020) 
12. Love? (Virtually Live 2020)
13. Spirits Will Collide (Virtually Live 2020)
14. Kingdom (Virtually Live 2020)
15. Detox (Virtually Live 2020)

Devin Townsend's body of work is eclectic to say the least. When he's not raising six-figure sums for Covid relief via live home studio gigs, he conjures up everything from hour-long ambient guitar instrumentals to theatrical rock to death metal.

It may come as no surprise, then – although it probably will – that the Canadian musician has composed the soundtrack to a new children's TV show entitled Colours, hosted on BBC's CBeebies channel in the UK.

The show – aimed at young children – takes viewers on a journey to “explore the wonder and variety of colors that surround us”. For readers in the UK, you can watch the series on BBC iPlayer. Take a listen to a snippet of Townsend's score on the Colours trailer below.

To date, seven episodes of 14 have aired, centering around the colors red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple and rainbow. As you'll notice, there hasn't yet been an episode on the color black. Could a black metal score be on the horizon? Probably not, but we can dream.

When a fan asked Townsend on Twitter whether he scored all episodes in the series, Hevy Devy replied: “Yep. 14 episodes. All the music. Nearly broke me”, before signing off with a sarcastic smiley face.

Townsend is currently working on a follow-up to 2019's Empath, entitled Puzzle. In separate tweets posted March 21, he divulged more on the pressures of creating a TV soundtrack whilst producing an album.

“So yeah, during the making of Puzzle, I made a soundtrack to a kid's show on the BBC,” he wrote. “It was a big learning curve and lots of work, but the people who produced it were very cool.”

This is, of course, not the first instance of metal seeping into the world of children's entertainment. The intro riff from Megadeth's 1990 thrash metal masterpiece Holy Wars... The Punishment Due was recently found in an educational spelling book.

Devin Townsend has stayed busy during the pandemic, raising more than $100,000 for COVID relief through home studio live video concerts, as well as releasing live albums and quarantine recordings.

Now the singer and guitarist has announced the Devolution Series, which he describes as “a grouping of oddities and interesting material that I would like people to hear, but don’t necessarily want to present as a ‘major release.’ ”

The series will include all the quarantine songs and concerts, as well as various live shows from the past few years.

The first release is a remixed and remastered version of the acoustic guitar-based Live in Leeds show originally released on the 2020 Empath Ultimate Edition.

“It was a cool acoustic show that deserves to be heard I think,” Townsend said of the gig, which was previously released only in video format. 

“So we can use this as an introduction to the series,” he continued, adding that he is “currently deep in the writing of my new projects and am very excited to be doing so. Thanks for facilitating my ability to do that, and I hope you enjoy the Devolution Series.”

Devolution Series #1 - Acoustically Inclined, Live in Leeds is out March 19. You can pre-order it here.

Devin Townsend’s signature acoustic guitar model (as well as his latest album) is named the Empath, and clearly the singer, songwriter and guitarist, despite unleashing plenty of exceedingly heavy music over the past few decades, has a sensitive side.

So much so, in fact, that he once “took a shit” in Steve Vai’s guitar case.

At the time, Townsend was fronting Vai’s solo band – he appears on the guitar great’s 1993 album, Sex & Religion – and was struggling with being thrown into the deep end of the music world.

“At that point I was actually 19 years of age,” Townsend recalls in a new interview with Kerrang! “ I’d sent a demo tape off to Relativity Records, and I got signed. On the same label was Steve Vai, who had just put out a solo record and was looking for a singer. The A&R guy passed on my demo to Steve and he asked me to participate. I joined his fold and we recorded an album in 1991 or 1992, and we did two years of touring on that."

He continues, "We did things like play with Aerosmith and appear on The Tonight Show, so it really was in at the deep end. It was pretty over-the-top for someone who had never had that kind of experience. I had never played in arenas before, for one thing. I’ve always been very idealistic about music, and when I moved to LA, which I did at this time, I assumed that all musicians felt that way. I pictured an empathetic and nurturing industry.

“But, the music industry is, overall, a disingenuous place. It’s a hustle. So when I went down there I was deflowered pretty quickly. And I felt at that point that I wanted to take and make things explode.”

When the interviewer points out that Vai, in fact, “seems like a very nice person,” Townsend replies, “Yeah. But he was coming off the Whitesnake thing so he really was a rock star at this point. Thirty years on, our relationship has taken a good turn and we’re close. But I think at the time, I didn’t have many ways that I felt I was able to articulate my discontent, so I tended to act up.”

Regarding defecating in Vai’s guitar case, Townsend remarks that it was probably “confusing for him. I think that I felt that unequivocally that would express my discontent with how I was feeling about things.”

We’d reckon Townsend got his point across.

Despite an inability to perform in actual venues, Devin Townsend has engaged in a number of live performances over the lockdown period via livestream – many of which have raised money for coronavirus relief.

But for Halloween, Hevy Devy may have gone overboard – quite literally – with a full-blown CGI pirate ship for his ‘Crappy Halloween Party’ stream, featuring a guest appearance from a certain Captain Hook.

Dressed as the infamous pirate is, of course, none other than Townsend’s old bandmate and friend Steve Vai, who crops up during a performance of the Devin Townsend Band’s Triumph to play a solo using an actual hook.

Vai does eventually ditch the appendage to engage in some more traditional picking, assisted by some zany whammy bar – and DigiTech Whammy – use. And he even wields a sword at the end for good measure.

You can watch Vai’s original blue-screen recording above, and Townsend’s piratical performance below. Arr! Etc.

We’ve reported on plenty of Devin Townsend signature Framus electric guitars, and now fans can get their unplugged Townsend on with Prestige Guitars’ latest run of his acoustic model, the Empath.

The hand-built dreadnought acoustic guitar boasts a torrefied Adirondack spruce top, Indian rosewood back and sides and 3A flame maple bevels on the armrest, backrest and cutaway. 

There’s also a hand-carved mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard, ebony bridge, bone nut and saddle and a natural satin finish.

The Empath is limited to just 100 guitars worldwide, and each one includes a numbered, handwritten autographed letter from Townsend hidden inside the soundhole.

The guitar is available for preorder for $2,699. A 50% deposit is required upon placing an order, with the balance collected prior to shipment in October 2020.

For more information, head to Prestige Guitars.

As we recently reported, Devin Townsend has been filling his quarantined days raising more than $100,000 for COVID-19 relief through home studio live video concerts, recording and releasing an hour-long ambient guitar instrumental and video jamming with Brazilian thrash legends Sepultura.

Now, the electric guitar player has announced a new virtual event, Empath Volume 2: By Request, which will see him perform the set he was scheduled to play at the UK’s Bloodstock Open Air festival this year.

Townsend’s band for the performance will include guitarist and Seymour Duncan signature pickup artist Wes Hauch, former Dillinger Escape Plan bassist Liam Wilson drummer Samus Paulicelli.

Explained Townsend, “So, I was thrilled to announce my headlining of Bloodstock this year, and with an eye on doing my first 'by request' set that included my entire career (including Strapping Young Lad and all the Devin Townsend Project albums), I know there were a lot of people that were really excited as well.

“But then, as we all know, circumstances prevented that from happening, and that was disappointing as the show was meant to be a pivotal moment in my creative career. But every roadblock is an opportunity for something different so we have come up with a plan to bring you the show in a way I believe will be kind of revolutionary and damned exciting.”

Townsend continued, "We have been working tirelessly to bring you a 'virtual' concert of the ‘by request’ set, with musicians playing together, yet all in different parts of the world. However, I wanted to do something different, not the 'Brady Bunch' type split screen visuals filmed on smartphones (they are cool, but also not really exciting in my opinion).

“Instead, we have opted to make a full production, filming ourselves separately, playing our instruments live, on greenscreens, with eight cameras each (all at the same heights and distances for each of our remote shoots) and then combine these elements on a crazy virtual stage. It's ambitious, but I think the closest to a monster concert as can be achieved this summer. Considering everyone is scattered throughout the land yet not wanting to 'let the dream die' we have stumbled upon something rather amazing I think.”

In addition to the performance, Townsend will answer viewer questions throughout “to make it a totally interactive experience that acts not only as a cool way to spend a Saturday, but also as a potentially new way to do concerts entirely.

“The players I have hired have worked their butts off learning the material, and it's going to be one of the coolest things I’ve done in recent memory.”

The performance, which will be the full 85-minute Bloodstock set, will take place through StageIt on September 5.

“It's not just any quarantine concert; this one is a quantum leap of sound and visuals,” Townsend said. “I can’t wait for you to see this.”

Tickets are on sale now. To purchase, head to StageIt.

Brazilian thrash legends Sepultura have been keeping busy during the coronavirus lockdown with a series of video performances featuring guests like Anthrax electric guitar player Scott Ian and System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian.

Now the band has uploaded a ripping performance of their 2011 song, Mask, with guest riffing and soloing (and, as it turns out, screaming), from the one and only Devin Townsend.

Just how ripping is it? Following the jam, Townsend puts down his Framus and exclaims, “Ouch!”

Townsend, for his part, has been filling his quarantined days raising more than $100,000 for COVID-19 relief through home studio live video concerts, as well as recording and releasing an hour-long ambient guitar instrumental, among other endeavors.

You can also check out a conversation with Townsend and Sepultura on the SepulQuarta live Q&A.

Devin Townsend has long been one of music’s most prolific electric guitar players, and it seems the coronavirus shutdown hasn’t slowed him one bit.

In addition to his recent home studio live concerts that have been raising money for healthcare workers around the world, Townsend has now released a 66-minute-long guitar improvisation, which can be heard in full above.

The atmospheric track, title Guitar Improvisation #1, shows a different side of the normally aggro Strapping Young Lad leader, who has acknowledged to us in the past that a big part of his childhood consisted of "hanging out on the roofs of my friends' houses swapping Van Halen licks."

As he explains in the accompanying text:  

“So, it’s been a strange week, and I have been writing a lot of strange music. Amidst the more tumultuous stuff that’s appeared, I often find it therapeutic for me to just simply play guitar in the mornings, and over the years I've kind of 'developed' (for lack of a better descriptor) a sort of chilled out, ambient guitar technique.

"This isn't meant to be focused on; it's meant to be a sort of wash that you can play while working, chilling, or creating something (that’s my hope at least).”

Townsend continues, “This improvisation is one take (with a bathroom break I edited out), and I used a Sadowsky Telecaster and a Fractal AX8 for the sound.

“Hopefully its helpful to some of you who need a sonic break. Thanks again for the ability to do this. I’ll release this in a physical form if there’s any interest. I really like echo. Peace. Dev.”

Devin Townsend is an artist who seems to be perpetually busy with one project or another, and thankfully for all of us the electric guitar player has stayed active even during the coronavirus shutdown.

Over the past weeks, Townsend has been hosting live concerts in his home studio and raising money for healthcare workers around the world.

His most recent performance, on April 25, sold 3,420 tickets and raised more than $81,000 for the NHS in the UK.

A previous show, meanwhile, aided Vancouver’s General Hospital and raised nearly $50,000 on sales of close to 2,000 tickets.

Townsend’s next home studio concert will support hotspot hospitals in New York City and take place on May 2 at noon PDT.

The concerts, all featuring unique setlists, last roughly 50 minutes, and Townsend films each show with a four-camera rig operated via an Xbox controller.

Top donors for each show receive signed merchandise from Omerch, album goodies from InsideOut and products from several of Townsend’s gear sponsors, including Mooer, Fractal, Toontrack, Dunlop and Fishman.

All ticket buyers also receive a “somewhat tidied-up” remixed version of the show’s audio recording.

You can check out footage from the April 25 gig above.

To purchase tickets for the May 2 performance, head to Stageit.com.

It's Friday, so you know what that means... This week's essential guitar tracks! Here's where the Guitar World team collate our favorite guitar tracks from the past week, delivering the best six-string listening material that's been hitting our collective eardrums. And given the restrictions placed upon many people at the moment, now might just be the time to expand your musical mind.

This week we’ve got everything from progressive groove-djent metal to contemporary R&B licks and even a new track from veteran rockers Deep Purple. Enjoy!

Melanie Faye - It’s A Moot Point

We’ve been keeping a close eye on this Nashville R&B prodigy since she first went viral back in 2017. In that time, Faye's career has seen her work with the likes of Mac DeMarco, Willow Smith and Hayley Williams, while she’s also appeared as the face of Fender’s Player Stratocaster.

All that experience is showcased in new single It’s A Moot Point, a laid-back R&B groove complete with Hendrixian rhythm work, jazz-inflected chord changes, and rapid-fire bursts of the most exquisitely phrased soul licks outside of Mateus Asato. This is the sound of guitar in 2020 - more of this, please. (MAB)

Devin Townsend - Quarantine

Canada’s favorite mad prog scientist was one of countless guitarists who saw their touring schedules wiped out by the coronavirus outbreak over the past few weeks. Following the launch of a GoFundMe campaign, which quickly amassed the $50,000 goal required to offset the costs of the cancelled tour, Townsend uploaded the aptly named Quarantine to say thank you.

The ethereal, pared-down recording recalls Pink Floyd at their most contemplative, but a high-gain middle-eight modulation serves as a comforting reminder that Hevy Devy ain’t going anywhere. (MAB)

Deep Purple - Throw My Bones

This four-to-the-floor rocker is the lead-off track from the Brit-rock stalwarts’ 21st album, Whoosh!, which lands on June 12 and, rather confusingly, follows the band’s recent Long Goodbye Tour.

Although Don Airey’s synth stabs dominate the track, Morse’s percussive rhythm playing provides the unshakeable backbone - and when he gets his chance to shine, the virtuoso thrusts his Ernie Ball Music Man into epic territory, with wide, vocal bends, taken up a notch by by some cunningly employed chromatic passing notes. (MAB)

Paradise Lost - Fall from Grace

Kicking off with a characteristic slow-tempo riff, Paradise Lost’s latest single Fall from Grace develops slowly into a somber epic of melody and doom in which the guitars take center stage.

Guitarists Greg Mackintosh and Aaron Aedy showcase their fretboard dominance, trading riffs, licks and solos throughout the track’s near six-minute duration. This is gothic metal at its finest - and what a timely release. (SR)

Robby Krieger - Slide Home

Jim Morrison was always going to be the most iconic member of The Doors. With an electric stage presence, tabloid-ready on- and offstage antics and (for their time) radical, apocalyptic lyrics, he made The Doors much larger than life. Without the impeccable six-string skills of bandmate Robby Krieger, though, Morrison’s psychedelic poetry wouldn’t have had a fraction of its power.

Just one listen to Krieger’s new single, Slide Home, is enough to prove that - more than half a century after The Doors’ heyday - Krieger’s still got it. His slide playing on this instrumental gem is beautifully melodic, evoking a place far more blissful than our current, troubled reality. (JM)

Caligula’s Horse - The Tempest

And now, for the best of contemporary Aussie prog-metal. Brisbane five-piece Caligula’s Horse conjure a storm with The Tempest, a time signature-shifting guitar masterclass that’s tastefully interspersed with classical instruments throughout. Guitarists Sam Vallen and Adrian Goleby lock in tightly with drummer Josh Griffin for the track’s almost five minutes, delivering some serious six-string ear candy.

The Tempest comes ahead of the band’s fifth full-length studio album Rise Radiant, which the band have dubbed the “culmination of their artistic development.” Should be good, then. (SR)

Sasami - Mess

Sasami Ashworth’s 2019 debut album was one of the year’s best. Packed to the brim with perfectly minimalist guitar playing - there was hardly a note on the record that felt out of place - tight, powerful arrangements and uncompromisingly personal, deeply affecting lyrics, it was an album with true staying power in our age of constant media and information bombardment.

Sasami’s new, non-album single, Mess, is no different. If the no-time-for-bullshit lyrics and dreamy, almost country-ish leads that dot the first verse don’t pull you in straight away, the tasty, fuzz-drenched solo that injects itself into the song less than a minute in certainly will. (JM)

Upon A Burning Body - Built from War

Texan four-piece Upon a Burning Body's Built from War is a driving metal freight train that’s certain to whet the appetite of any rock-inclined guitarist. 

Resident axeman Ruben Alvarez puts on a furious display of fiery fretwork in the form of face-melting guitar solos and pounding drop-tuned riffs, instrumentally bolstering the song’s lyrical call-to-arms and solidifying the track as a true heavy-metal home run. (SR)

Shattered Skies - Born of Solder

Progressive groove-djent metal makes a welcome appearance in this week’s list, courtesy of British quartet Shattered Skies. Born of Solder features some of the most impressively tight playing we’ve heard in a while, with guitar and bass riffs in perfect synergy, mind-bending beats and a catchy melodic chorus vocal that fits surprisingly well with the instrumental section.

Tap-happy guitarist Ian Rockett uses a Strandberg to deploy his arsenal of leads - a brand that’s, to say the least, well-regarded amongst the community’s more prog-inclined players. (SR)

St George’s, Bristol is an unlikely venue to find Devin Townsend - the 19th-century former church is more used to playing host to orchestral recitals and polite folk music rather than Hevy Devy.

However, tonight it couldn’t be more suitable. Devin is here solo, armed only with his acoustic guitar, Axe FX and a laptop to perform songs spanning his career, interspersed with Q&A sessions with the audience.

During his soundcheck, we witness a fittingly chaotic take on Mr Blobby (“He was big when I moved here in the 90s”), while Devin’s ambient guitar sounds bounce around a room that is renowned for its acoustic response.

When it’s time to check the vocals, Devin effortlessly flips between orthodox choral singing techniques and guttural screaming, perfectly encapsulating the diverse and eclectic nature of his music. For his latest, Empath, Devin walked away from the familiarity of the Devin Townsend Project and its members in favour of a host of guest appearances.

“Empath was an 18-month process that was a result of me being aware of the fact that the last three records I’ve done have been continually more safe in terms of how I present my vision.” he tells us. “And I figured that the only way to shake that up would be to challenge myself in various ways.”

“I think the overriding way was to use my back catalogue as a springboard for writing music that reflected each era in a new composition. By doing that, I felt that I could quantify my relationship with that musical aesthetic. The people I used on the record are also in very much the same light, coming from disparate musical backgrounds.

"There’s a lot of the Zappa alumni, for example. Some younger guys who are involved in more current things, some death metal guys, some prog guys, a women’s choir, orchestras, Chad from Nickelback, Vai… That desire to have all of those different colours on the record fitted in with the music that seemed to be presenting itself, and there’s Empath!”

Devin has had many different guises – solo artist, vocalist for none other than Steve Vai, producer, and even a one-time member of The Wildhearts. Here, he takes a candid look back over the experiences that have helped shape his career.

Let’s start at the beginning, what first drew you to guitar?

"I think guitar might have been slightly later. I picked it up because my dad had an acoustic hanging around the house. But before that I plunked around on the piano and the banjo, but I didn’t really focus on the guitar until maybe 11 or 12. I don’t think I ever had banjo technique! 

"Every stringed instrument I’ve ever played I just tuned like a guitar and played it like a guitar. I was recently playing a sitar and I played that exactly the same way as a guitar. I think my guitar interests started with Chet Atkins, Johnny Cash and a lot of classical stuff, but I think a lot of that was because before I got into metal, I was interested in musical theatre as a kid. 

"It really resonated with me because it was broad strokes of emotion that were easy for formative musical minds to adhere certain tonalities with certain emotions. Soundtracks like The Dark Crystal and Tron and Star Wars – those were things that really interested me."

Where did the heavy side come in?

"It all changed when I first heard Slade, which drew my interests towards rock guitar sounds. From there it just kind of snowballed. My dad got really pissed off at a Judas Priest video, so clearly that was next in line – W.A.S.P., Judas Priest, Motley Crue and all that stuff. Then Metallica when I heard Ride The Lightning. It was just so heavy! Then from there it was Anthrax, Venom. Judas Priest was a real big deal for me.

"Then later on Def Leppard came, and I fell in love with it. More so because of the production. It was like a quantum leap. I had my Walkman at the time, and Hysteria was so fucking good that I ignored some of the lyrics, or how Rocket was maybe not so much of a great song because it sounded so good."

"It was around that time that I really got into new age music too. In fact, my love of reverb on guitar probably came from this flute player called Paul Horn. He tracked a record in the late 60s at the Taj Mahal with all the reverb and everything. But the one that really did it for me was this new age-y instrumental keyboard and flute band called Emerald Web. Cat Apple who is the flautist in that ended up playing with me on Ghost and Casualties of Cool and stuff. 

"I actually usually prefer it when there’s no guitar in it. Not no guitar, but Radiohead on a good day – everything after Kid A and In Rainbows – that type of guitar and production I think is great, they do things that I find really interesting. Massive Attack as well. That’s why I like being in Bristol, that whole scene that was here was a big thing for me too. Mezzanine is still amazing now."

What made you decide to stick with the guitar?

"I think it was the aesthetic of the guitar. In the early to mid-80s, the guitar was what video games are to kids now, I think. Even though we had games back then, the guitar was really a social thing. And maybe because admittedly I’ve always been a bit of an odd duck, the guitar was a way for me to participate in what other kids were doing. 

"I wasn’t really ever ostracized at all, but I was never really part of a scene until one day I remember distinctly. There were a bunch of cool kids in the back room of eighth grade band; they had a guitar and one of them was like ‘Oh, I think Devin knows how to play!’ and so I came in and I was playing Judas Priest or whatever. And I think as a result of that, everything just kind of hardwired to [the guitar]. 

"But in my neighborhood, the first Van Halen record was such a big part of my childhood that we all used to just hang out on the roof of each others' houses and swap Van Halen licks. I don’t think I ever got any of them down necessarily, but I remember in metal shop we used to make whammy bars out of steel rods. Then we’d hand around tablature to each other. 

"The best guitar player in the school was this guy called Alex, and he gave me the tab for the tapping part of Eruption, and I remember that was the first real Van Halen feather in my hat. 

A lot of guitar players also want to become vocalists, how did you get started? 

"Vocals were – up to very recently – a conundrum for me because I actually remember very specifically when I was getting into guitar having a bit of an eighth grade crisis, thinking ‘Do I want to be a singer, or do I want to be a guitarist?’ We were all just so infatuated by music that we all wanted to be rockstars.

"It wasn’t like a conscious ‘I’m going to do this’, more just like, ‘[Music] is what I do’. I remember being honestly torn on which to focus on, so I chose to do both. It wasn’t until the Steve Vai experience that I really began to resent singing, it’s only been over the last year, literally, that I’ve really begun to really enjoy singing.

"I’ve always been OK with hearing my voice, maybe when I first started, like anyone I was like ‘Who the fuck is that?!’ But when I finally learnt how to control it in some way, due to a very strong choir teacher, I remember the effort that went into singing I really resented. But the product of it I was actually quite happy with."

Did you ever take vocal lessons?

"I took various vocal lessons, but none of them taught me what my grade nine choir teacher taught me. His name was Peter Springer. The town we grew up in, in Canada which is part of the commonwealth, was New Westminster, and I was raised in Surrey. Which was funny when I finally got over to the UK!

"But Surrey was a real low-income sort of area when I was growing up: trans ams and AC/DC and everyone got hammered on the weekends. But because I always had a real strong artistic sense, I felt like I had to suppress it in some ways back then, because it didn’t feel appropriate for where I was raised. 

"But my choir teacher was the one who instilled a real sense of confidence in me. He was like ‘You should really just get over that, learn to sing and be who you’re meant to be’. So he taught me all the fundamentals of singing. Along the way I’ve learnt various things from people like vocal warm-ups or ways of maintaining my voice. But it was him that really taught me 80 per cent of what I do. 

"You have a lot of control over the tonality of your voice, was that difficult to achieve? Somebody led me to a Myles Kennedy interview yesterday where he’s talking about his vocal technique. He knows what he’s doing, so I thought ‘I’d like to read this’. In the interview he’s like ‘I utilize the top part of my palette for this and that, and I’ve got this operatic technique that I went to school for for breaking between the head tone and the chest tone…’ 

"I realized that I felt quite insecure because I don’t know any of this. None of it. In fact, whatever technique I have has been based on trial and error. I know what I do, but I don’t know the technical aspect.

"There’s this trend lately on YouTube where they have vocal teachers reacting to performances. First off: there can’t be that many vocal teachers! But I watched one, and I got about halfway through because it’s hard to watch somebody talking about you. They were explaining my technique and how I control it and I’m like ‘I have no idea’.

"I’ve been touring for 25 years and I’m 46, so now it’s much more about that rather than the awareness of a technique. If I was pressed then I could probably describe what I am doing to the point that it would make sense."

But Myles is really good. Tonally it’s something different than I go for, but he’s one of the few guys who has really got a good voice. He can sing the shit out of it. He had a solo acoustic album recently that made me go ‘This guy really knows how to sing’. It’s funny, I was going for a walk the other day and I was listening to Exodus. People have credited me for years now saying ‘You scream in tune’ as if it was some sort of unique talent. But listening to Exodus, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what they do too’. 

"Faith No More did that, Soundgarden did that, Pantera did that. I heard the other day that it’s called a vocal fry. I find it almost offensive when you deconstruct something like that. My whole approach, same as guitar, is just to do it until it works! I’m good friends with Frederik from Meshuggah, and he’s credited for inventing this djent thing. And he’s just like ‘What the fuck?’. It’s funny how you can be credited on some level for something that you feel no responsibility for!

It’s well-known that you got started playing with Steve Vai, how did that come about?

"After King’s X and all that sort of stuff I really got into guitar heroes. For about two or three years all I wanted to do was listen to Vinnie Moore, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Tony McAlpine and all of the Shrapnel stuff. That was it for me. Then when Passion And Warfare came out I just loved Steve, it was great. 

"Then when I was about 17 or 18, that’s when Soundgarden and Faith No More and Godflesh started to replace that. Right around that time is when I met Steve. I got signed to Relativity by the demo that I’d made. They flew me out to New York and gave me a really cool record deal, so I went back and started recording it. Then they called me about a month after I started recording and said ‘By the way, there’s another guy on our label, Steve, who’s looking for a singer and he heard your demo and freaked out. He really wants to start working with you’ and I was blown away. 

"But, because now what I was really interested in was [what I was doing], when I met up with Steve it was sort of like in a sense that I was trying to prove not only to myself but to him ‘Oh, I’m past this’. Not like ‘I’m better than this’, but when you’re that age you’re really trying to find your own identity. And I was like, ‘That was where I was when I was 16, but now I want everything to be really heavy’. So I think that negatively affected our relationship, but it created the type of tension between us that some people really enjoy retroactively."

"We did the Sex And Religion album, and we did a bunch of touring, and it was a very confusing time. The record was not received particularly well, and I think rightly so. Steve’s fanbase don’t want to hear vocals. The management that we had was Desmond Child who was like a pop songwriter who’d worked with Elton John and Bon Jovi. He was convinced that we needed to be a band that has songs on the radio, so he wrote a bunch of songs like In My Dreams With You and I hated that song. Really hated it. 

"His lyrics were so personal to him that as a kid singing it, I was really embarrassed by it. And it’s not like I thought it was bad, I just really wanted to be where I wanted to be – I had my record deal and my band with a seven-record deal and I was like, ‘This is what I want to do’. It was just so different to In My Dreams With You and stuff like that, that I really resented it at the time. 

"That was conflicting to me too because singing for him, that’s why I’m here. It’s why we’re talking today, without that situation things would have been profoundly different. And I even realised that at the time – it was the best possible thing that could happen to me, mixed with ‘Oh, I hate this’ and my behaviour reflected that I think. That lasted maybe two and a half/three years."

Steve is on Empath, so clearly things are different now?

"At 46, holy shit, Steve and I are really good friends now. At the time he was only 34 years old, and I was only 19. Plus he was a 34 year-old who had just come off being a fucking rockstar and had millions of dollars! So I think as soon as I would admit my failings in that situation, he would admit where he went south on that too. We collided at a point in our lives where I think we needed each other in a lot of ways.

"But because the situation was so… weird, I really resented singing after that, and I didn’t want to play guitar solos anymore. So it’s taken this long to really get back into that. I just wanted to be like ‘Listen to how ugly this can be!’

Did you and Vai play a lot of guitar together?

"I think a lot of proficiency that I had garnered as a teen got put to good use in Steve’s band because I was able to play a lot of what he asked me to play. Like, I was really good at sweep picking – we all were at that age – but that was something that he hadn’t practiced so I kind of used that to my advantage! He kept practicing it, now he can do it really well, right? But at the time he was just like ‘Fuck! I never practiced that shit!’ and I’d stand there [mimes sweeping].

"But I came out of it not wanting to do solos, and also telling myself that nobody is ever going to tell me what to sing ever again. It shapes negatively as well because I think I end up with these self-conscious obstacles that you don’t realise are part of the litany of things that you’d be better off without. So luckily, I feel like these things have worked themselves out over the past few years.

Some people might not know you were a member of The Wildhearts. It’s not an obvious pairing…

"We were on tour with Aerosmith, which was this big arena tour and it was awesome!  We were playing the NEC, I think, and after the show Big Mick, who does the sound for Metallica, came up to Steve and said ‘Your soundman is shit. I’ll come on tour with you, but you have to take the band that I’m managing to open for you’ and that was The Wildhearts. 

"So, we went on tour and I was just so angry during this tour. One of the guys in our crew who was always just a peckerhead, and he was to Ginge. He came in one day and he was all white and he goes ‘The singer from the band just held me up against the back of the venue with a broken bottle and said he was going to cut my throat!’ and I was like ‘Who is this again?!” Then I just ended up spending a lot of time with The Wildhearts.

"One day, Steve did something that I got really upset about and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. As a kid, regretfully I ended up destroying his back room… and then Ginge asked me to join the band!

"It’s out of character for me to do anything like that, so it was just one of these fortuitous moments where our paths crossed. So I moved to Wendesbury, which is basically 400 council houses and 500 pubs on the outskirts of Birmingham, and I was with them for about a year and a half. It was during the Fuck album, we did a bunch of shows and a tour with Suicidal Tendencies and Reading Festival and stuff. Then I got signed to Century Media for the angry stuff that I was doing.

"I moved back home to start working on that, then Ginge came to Vancouver and stayed with me for a while. I love Ginge though, man. I think we have respect for each other, I may be right or I may be wrong. We’re both pretty strong-willed but on opposite ends of the spectrum. I don’t do anything that I don’t want to do, and nor does he."

It takes a lot to arrive at that sort of attitude

"It’s been incremental that my resolve has taken shape. For years I would do what people wanted. But one at a time I was like ‘Ok, I’m not going to do that anymore’, and even down to the people that I work with. Not in a combative way. On Empath I said to the label and management, ‘You’re not getting any demos, I’m going to spend whatever I feel like spending on it, and once it’s done, I’m not going to change it. Sorry!'

"These are steps that as an artist I think I need to take for myself. Because otherwise I think you run into this situation of doing what is expected of you to the behest of what you should be doing. So I’ve sort of battened down the hatches the last while and it’s been really helpful for me."

• Devin Townsend's Empath is out now via InsideOutMusic. Order it here.

The Framus Teambuilt Pro Series, which comes between the company’s flagship Masterbuilt Custom Shop models and import Standard D-Series line, offers several different Artist Series electric guitars for an interesting group of players that includes Phil X (who switched to Gibson last week), Stevie Salas and Alice In Chains frontman William DuVall. 

But by far their most interesting artist is progressive metal musician Devin Townsend (best known for the Devin Townsend Project, Strapping Young Lad and his work on Steve Vai’s Sex and Religion), who collaborated with Framus on an appropriately out-of-the-ordinary model called the Stormbender Devin Townsend Artist Series. 

Fitting for a visionary, genre-defying artist like Townsend, the Stormbender seems like an unconventional instrument, but it makes perfect sense once you get to know it.

• The 11 best electric guitars: top guitars for all styles, abilities and budgets
• 10 best metal guitars: the most hell-raising electric guitars for shredders

Features

Although it's built from conventional tonewoods, including a mahogany body and set maple neck, the Stormbender features a generously thick 2-inch body with a carved and contoured top and back with a AA flame maple top inset in an oval section running down the middle of the body. 

The neck has a 25.5-inch scale, and 22 extra-high jumbo frets installed with Framus’s Invisible Fretwork Technology (IFT) and Plek set up. The model is available in transparent Nirvana Black, and the tigerstripe ebony fretboard is minimally adorned with a Devin Townsend circle at the 11th through 13th frets.

Pickups are a pair of Townsend’s signature Fishman Fluence Transcendence ceramic magnet humbuckers with a hybrid magnetic circuit that provides two distinct humbucking and single-coil tones accessed via a push/pull switch on the master tone knob. The Evertune bridge and Graph Tech Ratio locking tuners keep the guitar perfectly in tune.

Performance

The Devin Townsend Stormbender Artist Series boasts very aggressive and distinctive midrange, thanks to the 635Hz/3.4kHz (bridge) and 780Hz/3.4kHz (neck) peak frequencies of its pickups' humbucking and single-coil settings. 

As a result, the guitar delivers a throaty, full-bodied sound that works equally well with high-gain and clean amp settings and also seems to pull more tonal variation and range out of standard amp tone controls. Even with a graphic EQ set to a scooped mid setting, the guitar’s tone remains robust and chunky.

Our example weighed a little more than nine pounds, but the weight is well distributed and the guitar feels much lighter when strapped on and played in a standing position. The fretwork is stunning, with a smooth, fast feel, and access up and down the neck is unrestricted, thanks to the neck heel that is contoured seamlessly to the body like a neck-thru design.

STREET PRICE: $3,999
MANUFACTURER: Framus, warwickbass.com/en/Framus

• A pair of Devin Townsend’s signature Fishman Fluence Transcendence pickups provide a selection of two distinctive full humbucking and single-coil tones.

• The guitar always stays perfectly in tune thanks to the Evertune bridge, locking Graph Tech Ratio tuners and Graph Tech Tusq low-friction nut.

THE BOTTOM LINE: With the Stormbender Artist Series, Framus’s Teambuilt staff and Devin Townsend have joined forces to offer a solidbody guitar with style and sounds that are as innovative, appealing and distinctive as Townsend’s music.

NAMM 2020: The Warwick-owned German guitar manufacturer Framus has teamed up with the legendary Devin Townsend to deliver the Stormbender signature electric guitar, which will be part of the company's D-Series.

The guitar features a mahogany body with a AAAA flamed maple veneer top in a solid black high polish finish, and a set maple neck with a 22-fret tigerstripe ebony fingerboard and a 12" radius.

The Stormbender also features Fishman Fluence Devin Townsend Signature pickups, volume and tone controls with push-pull functionality, Framus machine heads, a Tune-o-matic bridge and black hardware. A RockBag Deluxe Line gig bag will also come included with every guitar.

The guitars in Framus' D-Series are manufactured in China, but with the same build quality as instruments of the Warwick RockBass Series.

The D-Series Artist Line Devin Townsend Stormbender will be available in late June 2020.

For more information, head to Warwick.

Devin Townsend is doing just fine but he sure is having a lot of trouble sleeping. It’s the work. “There is so much going on, and it’s such an intense and exciting moment that I just, I just can’t fall asleep!” he laughs.

Right now Townsend has a lot on. He’s holed up in Bolton, a former textiles town in northwest England, where rehearsals are underway for his forthcoming Empath Europe Volume 1 Tour, which opens Thursday, November 15th.

If he is not rehearsing, tethered to his electric guitar, he is on the treadmill (the only place he listens to metal these days), or he is on the phone, trying to explain why this tour is going to be such a big deal.

The Empath tour sees Townsend put together a new live lineup that includes Morgan Ågren on drums, Mike Keneally and Markus Reuter on guitar, Diego Tejeida on keyboards, Ché Aimee Dorval on vocals/guitars, Nathan Navarro on bass- plus a three-piece choir comprising Samantha and Anne Preis, and Arabella Packford.

It’s a tour that will see Townsend’s band play without click-tracks or backing tracks, with the intention that there will be room for improv.

“This is where I am at right now,” he says. “Sometimes where I am it is just an acoustic thing, just me and an acoustic guitar. And so when I am in a moment like that, in a certain way I am thankful for it, because it’s a lot easier! [Laughs] But this is where I am at right now. It seems to require a lot of people and a lot of production, and a lot of gear, and a lot of [coughs] notes!”

As Townsend explains here, the idea is each night will be different. There are spaces in the setlist where each member of the band starts the jam, and where the jam takes them Townsend can’t be 100 per cent sure.

“As opposed to trying to replicate the record exactly, you use this skill set of the people you have involved to make it something that isn’t the record,” says Townsend.

“Because if you want to hear the record, you’ve got the record. I am starting to realize that this kind of freedom in a live format is really where a lot of magic lies, and maybe that’s what I needed to learn out of this.”

Has this tour made you rethink your rig, or is yours sort of pack-up-’n’-play no matter the occasion? 

“I have obsessed about my gear for as long as I have been playing and I have finally decided that the Axe-Fx III - a single Axe-Fx III and one as a redundancy - with the FC12 [foot controller] and a single expression pedal is almost without question a perfect rig for me.

“I have now made my own cab sims. I work really closely with Fractal, and have everything that I wanted it to do throughout all my career: the patch changes, the spillovers, different tones, effects, routing, having consistent sound, having something I can travel with, having something that’s modular, having something that I can have a reliable backup for, powering my pedalboard without an external power. I just realized over the past six months that this is perfect; this is what I want.

“And it has been very liberating for me after years of assuming that all I needed to do was find a better amp, purchasing some old, crusty, brown-faced Princeton thinking that it is going to get me to that place that I have been dreaming of. It gives me all those tools and I am perfectly happy.”

Do you not have suffer from option paralysis?

“I am very good with options, because I think after having kids it has made it a lot easier for me to commit and move on.

"I mean, these are not real problems now. Maybe at one point it was. Like, ‘I don’t know whether this one with the tungsten-dipped kafuffle-buffer has the creamier high-end than this other one.’”

Will you have to change the arrangements to make Empath work live?

“Absolutely, yeah, because we are not using backing tracks or click-tracks or anything.

"The nature of the recorded material is that it is hundreds of tracks, so I have to scale the arrangements back tenfold just to make it function, but that being said, it offers some unique opportunities, specifically with this line-up, of really enjoying and actively pursuing different arrangements."

“For years I have always been under the assumption that when people go to see a show you want to replicate it, so that it sounds like the record. But what I started realizing towards the end of the last band I was in was that, after a while, it’s not really a performance; it’s almost like pantomime.

"It’s almost like you are doing a karaoke version of what you are doing. Sometimes the most memorable moments from these shows is when things fuck up! [Laughs]

"Y’know, right? When things go south and you kinda have to improvise your way through it, and so I tried to view this first tour, that we are just about to start here, through that lens.”

And in if there’s a unique performance each night, it makes it all the more essential to actually be there, to live in the moment.

“So true. So true, man. It’s like every night is something unique, right? Every night on the setlist a certain member’s name is listed and they start the jam. I like the idea that everybody whose turn it is goes out of their way to try and surprise the others, and then you just follow and you just see what happens.

"And there is an in-point and an out-point but, in the meantime, some of the stuff that occurs is just so beautiful, and so unique, that if we had tried to arrange any of that stuff it would just be flat.”

It’s like you are embracing the freedom to rewrite the songs in real-time. 

“There is a certain amount that has to be adhered to structurally, because there are so many people, and the arrangements of the songs tend to be pretty complicated in the first place. But as I grow as a musician and as a person, the thing that allows improvisation to be like a real part of your vocabulary is the ability to let things go.

“I think a lot of folks, including myself specifically - up until recently - my fear of making mistakes, because I am such a perfectionist when it comes to the work, would lead me to make mistakes.

“It’s like I am so concerned about screwing up that I just inevitably screw up, so part of the whole process of improvisation is, ‘Don’t hold onto it. Don’t record it. Don’t worry about it. If you screw up, make that screw up a new key or something.’

“And that has become really interesting, like in order to do it efficiently you can’t be fascinated by it in a way, and I find that really, really healthy.”

It’s difficult to improvise when we are preoccupied with perfection.

“On this run, I have proactively tried to find musicians who are improvisational, and musicians that have a certain freedom to their sensibility, so that when we all come together, not only does that sort of lack of preciousness seem to occur, but also everybody seems to be confident enough that it is not like eight people playing at the same time. [Laughs]

"You know what I mean!? It’s like you are listening to it and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. That doesn’t need me so I am not going to do anything.’ As opposed to, ‘What he is doing is very interesting so what I need to do is put a solo on top of it.’”

With so many players on the stage, and giving those permissions for improvising, it heightens your appreciation of space in an arrangement.

“Mm-hmm. I think any of us, if you are listening to music with a listening ear as opposed to a ‘I want to be seen as a great player’ ear, a lot of times it’s just about filling in the gaps.

"Like, ‘OK, what’s going on in this cloud of sound here? What does it need?’ Maybe it only needs a single note every four bars for your contribution, to make it better, and for you to actually be contributing to it, and I think a lot of times the intimidation tends to come from this sense of, ‘All these players are fantastic. I am not good enough to be with them.’ Whereas, I think anybody is good enough to play with anybody, if you are listening.”

Definitely. It’s always best to play with the best musicians possible. Invariably they will elevate your playing.

“Well the drummer, Morgan, who is basically my favorite drummer, ever, we first played together on this Casualties of Cool project, and the reason why I wanted him - he’s been with everyone, Zappa, Magma, Crimson, all these big, heavy cats - was because he is as good as he is, when he heard the Casualties’ music he said, ‘Oh, what it needs is a train beat. It doesn’t need a solo; it needs that.’

“And I think that there is a misconception, or at least there has been for me, as to what constitutes a great player, because when I was younger I used to think the great player was the guy who could play precise 64th-note arpeggios.

"But as I get older I am starting to think, ‘Well, the best player is the one who just listens and plays what the song needs.’ If you are with great players, eventually you are going to just make great music, because no-one is doing something absurd just for the sake of it.”

The best players play on the best songs and make the best music.

“Totally. I mean, you listen to the rhythm section of U2, for example, who play very simple bass and drums, but it is super-tight, super-groovy, and it’s great. And it doesn’t need more than that.

"I remember hearing someone talking about the bass player in Neil Young’s band years ago, and they said he was such a great bass player because all he did was change the pitch of the kick drum. It is about music, I guess. I mean, obviously! [Laughs]"

As a rule, the electric guitar needs accompaniment, and so it’s vital it finds its place in the mix. Is that something that you have always been conscious of? It’s like you are always reevaluating your playing and where it fits.

“Well, hearing it put like that, I guess the answer is yes. But it made me think while you were asking it what my connection to the guitar is in the first place. The guitar is just an extension of my trip, right?

"I am fortunate that I still have the ability to move my fingers, and stand, and all these things I am really thankful for obviously, because throughout my life the guitar has sort of accompanied me, and by me reevaluating where the guitar fits in the music I think that’s actually a by-product of me just evaluating where I fit in the music.

“The guitar is kind of an analogy for my trip, and when I was younger it was a tool. It was just like a hammer. And I would just use it to actualize these ideas, but then over the past five or six years, when I realized, that - holy shit! - I’ve been playing this thing for 35 years, and all those hang-ups that I have had about it in the past, like I am not a great alternate picker, I don’t use my pinky enough...

"All these sorts of things, things that used to make me feel poorly about myself, recently I see it and think, ‘No. That’s who you are.’ I don’t use my pinky a lot. And I like a ton of echo. Like all these things I’ve maybe felt insecure about in the past while I just recently thought, ‘Ah! That’s my trip. That’s who I am.’”

Guitarists get insecure about the craziest things.

“Yeah, I think that once you are at a point finding that you are comfortable with who you are, and whether or not that offends people or whether people like the idea, I mean, as long you’ve got your mind around who you are then it’s just about following that with conviction.”

Again, the pursuit of perfection can get in the way.

“I was just on the treadmill a couple of minutes back, and decided to listen to old Judas Priest. It’s been years. When I was a kid I just loved that band. I mean the really old ‘70s version of the band.

"And I realized when I was listening - I was listening to Unleashed in the East - and KK Downing was probably the biggest influence for me because it was all out of tune. And I don’t mean out of tune in that his chords were out of tune; it was the random guitar solos with the whammy bar that was totally out of tune.

“It was microtonal, whammy bar oddness, and I realize as I am playing now, I love that microtonal thing, even though in my world, and in my work, it’s gotten more progressive or orchestral, but that out-of-the-box tonality is something that I just love, and so, when I solo now I always go to that.

"I’ll be in the box for a couple of seconds and then I just wanna find those notes that are messed up, and then make them more messed up... And then put a ton of echo on them so it sounds deliberate! [Laughs]”

Unleashed in the East gets a lot of grief for the overdubs but they left all that microtonal animalism in there and it sounds amazing. It makes it feel alive and dangerous.

“Yeah, and you know what’s funny, I was actually thinking about what you just said when I was listening to it, about all the shit that they got for doing the overdubs.

"But on a practical level, I think it sounds great, so how much of the fact that it is overdubbed a problem just because of the fact that people think that they are not doing it correctly? Like, 'That’s not how you should do it!' But that has got nothing to do with my personal experience with that album.

“I liked how it sounded. I liked how the vocals sound - the vocals are great. In fact, I am really glad that his vocals were in tune on that because it was really inspiring to me as a kid.

"If it had been the original recording, where maybe he was all out of tune and missing words or what have you... There are certain records like that. I like to listen to music on the treadmill and the day before I listened to another one of my favorite live records which is by a band from California called Fear, from early ‘80s, and the album is called Fear: Live… For the Record, and that is just completely live.

"What makes that so good is that is terrible! Everything’s bad! But it just had such character that, for that, it was great.”

"I’ll be in the box for a couple of seconds and then I just wanna find those notes that are messed up, and then make them more messed up. And then put a ton of echo on them so it sounds deliberate! [Laughs]”

Devin Townsend’s Empath Europe Volume 1 Tour kicks off on November 15th, in Paris, France. See HevyDevy.com for worldwide dates.

Framus has announced the new Stormbender Devin Townsend Signature 7-String Masterbuilt electric guitar.

The new model, which follows a six-string version released last year, boasts a mahogany back and maple top and a carbon fibre middle block. There’s also a flame maple neck and tigerstripe ebony fretboard with illuminated fret markers, as well as a pair of active Fishman Fluence humbuckers accessed by volume and tone knobs with push/pull voicing options and a pickup selector switch.

Other features on the Stormbender include Graph Tech Ratio locking machine heads, a Graph Tech Black Tusq saddle, Warwick Security straplocks and an EverTune bridge.

For more information, head over to Framus' website.

Framus has unveiled its new Stormbender Devin Townsend Teambuilt guitar.

The Stormbender Devin Townsend Teambuilt features a flamed maple-topped mahogany body fitted with an EverTune bridge and Townsend's signature Fishman Fluence active pickups.

The guitar also features a set-in maple neck, a Tigerstripe Ebony fingerboard, Devin Townsend signature fingerboard inlays, illuminated fingerboard side dots, Graph Tech Ratio Locking Machine Heads, a Graph Tech Black Tusq nut and Plek fretwork.

The Pro Series Teambuilt Stormbender Devin Townsend is available now. Pricing of the guitar has yet to be determined.

For more info, head on over to warwick.de.

Last Friday, Machine Head premiered their new single, "Beyond the Pale," the first taste of their new album, Catharsis. That very afternoon, however, rock fans started pointing out that the song's main riff bears a resemblance to Devin Townsend's riff from "Love?," a popular 2005 tune by Strapping Young Lad.

Before we go any further (or is it farther?), let's check out both songs:

Thoughts? Opinions?

Anyway, from the looks of things, no one seems too upset about the supposed riff infraction.

Here's what Townsend said via Twitter: "People asking me about riff similarities: I don't have an opinion really. I've written riffs my whole career that sound like something else. ...I've used whole themes from other albums, movies or soundtracks. Art is a collage of your experiences, you taking clippings and reassemble.

"Heres the best part about comparison of MH new song to 'Love'—I basically ripped off the SYL chorus from this song ['City of Love' from Yes' hit 1983 album, 90125]."

Finally, here's Machine Head guitarist Robb Flynn's reaction to Townsend's reaction (also via Twitter):

"Shout out to Devin Townsend for being so cool. The Riff Police pulled me over, I got a $300 infraction for that one!! Like Dimebag always used to tell me, 'we're all just sharing riffs man.'

"Got a lot of respect for you Devin, super talented musician, amazing producer (As the Palaces Burn production crushes all!) And while I would proudly admit that I stole a riff from you...Was just a happy accident. Riff on brother!"

Got a question for your favorite guitarist? Let us be your go-between. The concept is easy—you submit your queries and we pass them on to some of the world's greatest guitarists. Only the sharpest and funniest questions will be used.

This month, we're giving you the chance to ask Devin Townsend anything you want! From playing with Steve Vai to Strapping Young Lad to his forthcoming Devin Townsend Project disc Transcendence...nothing's off limits!

Just email your questions to dearguitarhero@guitarworld.com and put "Devin Townsend" in the subject line. Remember to include your name in the email body, so you can get credited in the magazine, and impress and annoy your jealous friends!

The Devin Townsend Project have premiered a new video for "Kingdom." The track is from the band's expansive new CD/DVD set, The Retinal Circus.

The Retinal Circus, which was filmed at London's historic Roundhouse, is a three-hour-plus performance that spans Townsend's entire career. It features a full choir and theatrical cast, plus all-new visual and aural enhancements.

To oredr The Retinal Circus, visit iTunes for a digital copy or CM Distro for a variety of physical formats.

Check out Townsend online:

• hevydevy.com
• facebook.com/dvntownsend
• omerch.com

Devin Townsend Project have posted another performance video from By A Thread: Live in London 2011.

You can check out "Planet of the Apes" below.

Townsend & Co. played four shows in London in November 2011, all of which were dedicated to his most recent album concept — a journey through Townsend's different musical moods.

The project started in 2009 with Addicted and Ki and ended with last year's Deconstruction and Ghost. All four shows were filmed and released this month as By A Thread: Live in London 2011 through HevyDevy Records/InsideOut Music.

Today, one of metal's most prolific and eccentric musicians, Devin Townsend, is releasing a brand-new DVD box-set, By A Thread - Live in London 2011. The four-DVD set features footage from each of Townsend's sold-out concerts in London during which all four Devin Townsend Project albums were played in their entirety.

If you've never seen DTP live, you're missing out, but as a consolation we've got the exclusive premiere of Townsend and Co. performing the title track to Ghost from By A Thread. Watch it below.

You can order By A Thread - Live in London 2011 — which contains four DVDs and five CDs — right here.

Devin Townsend Project have posted an official trailer for their upcoming live DVD, By A Thread - Live in London 2011. Watch it below.

The four-DVD/five-CD set documents each of DTP's four concerts in London last November, which saw the group play a new album each night. Performances included 2009's Addicted and Ki as well as last year's Deconstruction and Ghost.

By A Thread - Live in London 2011 is out June 19 in North America through HevyDevy Records/InsideOut Music.

Devin Townsend's productivity is really something to be marveled at, and at this point in his career, that zany Canadian shows no signs of slowing down.

InsideOut Music has just announced a tentative release date for the Devin Townsend Project's much-talked about Epicloud album, penciling its release in for September 24.

One guest appearance has already been confirmed in vocalist Anneke Van Giersbergen, who you may know as the former frontwoman for The Gathering.

Townsend posted a ton of studio photos earlier today via his Twitter account, most of which you can check out below.

You'd be hard-pressed to name anyone in the world of metal who is more prolific and consistently good than Devin Townsend.

Since joining the world of social media, Devin has been extremely transparent in talking to fans about new projects, and earlier today he revealed a juicy tidbit about his long-awaited sequel to 2007's Ziltoid the Omniscient.

"Not to let the cat out of the bag too early, "he wrote on Twitter, "But fuck it: Working on a scheme to make Ziltoid 2 a feature length (ghetto style) movie!"

Last year, Townsend released two news albums, Deconstruction and Ghost, which were both released on June 20.

Yesterday, the Land Down Under got a special treat at the Perth stop of Australian's Soundwave Festival. Gojira were joined onstage by Devin Townsend and Meshuggah guitarist Fredrik Thordendal for a performance of "Of Blood & Salt." Check out the fan-filmed footage below.

"Of Blood & Salt" is the only track released so far from Gojira's long in-the-works Sea Shepherd project, an EP that sees the band collaborating with numerous metal all-stars. The five-song EP has been on hold for some time now after a harddrive crash nearly lost all of the band's work. Proceeds from the album are set to benefit The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which works to preserve marine wildlife.

Gojira are at work on the follow-up to 2008's The Way of All Flesh.

This video is related to the February 2012 issue of Guitar World. For the full text of the reviews, you can pick up the issue of newsstands now or in our online store.

In the following video, Guitar World's Paul Riario reviews the new Devin Townsend Signature PXD Vicious seven-string baritone guitar from Peavey, an axe which combines the deep tones of a baritone with the comfortable feel of a standard electric.

To celebrate the upcoming release of its PXD Vicious Devin Townsend Signature Model, Peavey -- with Guitar World -- will present an exclusive online performance by The Devin Townsend Project on Tuesday, December 20.

Just tune in right here to watch the show.

Peavey's PXD Vicious Devin Townsend Signature Model guitar is a new 7-string baritone model that will be available from Peavey retailers in January.

It has a 28-inch baritone scale, seven strings and a maple neck-through-body design that gives the instrument great sustain. The guitar boasts a pair of EMG pickups — including a custom EMG 81 7-string humbucker in the bridge position and an EMG 7-string single coil at the neck — that give the guitar menacing rhythm and lead tones and clean tones in the neck position. This gun-metal gray guitar is appointed with locking tuners and an ebony fretboard with jumbo frets.

“When Peavey and I decided to collaborate on this project, I knew that I wanted an instrument that could crush everything while maintaining a high level of quality and elegance,” said Townsend of The Devin Townsend Project and Strapping Young Lad. “This quest has redefined how I view the guitar. To have a company that knows how to get things done behind me with a metal axe like this is a real sense of power.”

PXD™ Vicious™ Devin Townsend Signature Model

• Designed with Devin Townsend
• 7-string baritone instrument with 28” scale
• Maple neck-through-body design for incredible sustain
• Alder body wings
• Locking tuners
• Adjustable bridge with string-through design
• EMG 7-string active neck pickup
• EMG 81 7-string active humbucking bridge pickup
• Volume control
• Three-way pickup toggle switch
• Ebony fretboard with 24 jumbo frets
• Glow-in-the-dark side fret markers for dark stages
• Gun metal gray finish with black accents
• U.S. MSRP $2059.99

Features, specifications and pricing are subject to change without notice.

This interview with Steve Vai appeared in the September 1993 issue of Guitar World. It appeared with the simple headline, "Obsession."

To see the Vai cover (which also features Devin Townsend) and all the GW covers from 1993, click here.

“The title of this interview,” Steve Vai jokes, “should be ‘Sorry Folks, I Can’t Help Myself.’”

I suppose he can’t. On several levels, Vai is one of rock’s great obsessive personalities. Fidgeting in the control room of his studio in the Hollywood Hills, he’s surrounded by the results of one burning obsession: his quest for the ultimate guitar tone and the most bitchin’ hard rock tracks this side of Venus. The room is piled high with effects racks, MIDI gear and other electronic devices - an imposing techno landscape relieved only by the occasional poster of a babe on a Harley.

The gear selection reflects the guitarist's tireless inquiry into the nature of sound itself. When Steve Vai says "I've put a lot of research into this," you'd best believe him -- whether the topic is the ideal way to mount a whammy bar or the true meaning of the Holy Trinity.

See, like many nice Italian boys from Long Island, New York, young Stevie grew up fixated on sex, religion and guitars. He explores all three in great detail on his new album, titled -- aptly enough -- Sex And Religion. It's an ambitious record that finds the seven-string axe demon matching chops with bass ace T.M. Stevens and drum virtuoso Terry Bozzio. For his vocal alter-ego, Vai chose 20-year-old Devin Townsend, a hitherto unknown singer/guitarist from Vancouver, Canada.

Having played alongside David Lee Roth and Whitesnake's David Coverdale, Vai is no stranger to manic, demonstrative lead singers. And his work producing kid rockers Bad 4 Good last year must have taught him a few lessons in how to deal with youthful high spirits in the recording studio. But no prior experience can quite prepare one for the motor-mouthed, hyperkinetic Mr. Townsend. The kid can scream like a lost soul getting its pancreas pecked out by a giant buzzard in the lowest circle of Dante's Inferno. And that's just on the ballads.

All in all, Sex And Religion is a jolting followup to Vai's instrumental opus Passion And Warfare. Most of the songs start out squarely in hard rock/pop territory. But they soon lurch off onto some harmonically or rhythmically bizarre tangent, often propelled by Vai' s trademark, death-defying axework. "That's what I mean when I say I can't help myself," he laughs.

But then we've come to expect as much from the lanky, intense guitarist who thinks nothing of practicing 15 hours a day. When Vai was just an impressionable young junior at The Berklee School Of Music, Frank Zappa thought enough of the young guitarist's prodigious devotion to assign him the daunting task of transcribing all the intricate arrangements for Zappa's band. Vai subsequently soared to greatness, his skill and near-fanatical commitment to excellence carrying him from triumph to triumph on his chosen instrument.

Some people are victimized by their own obsessions. Vai seems to draw power from his. And as the following interview suggests, if there's anything he likes more than acting out his fascination with sex, religion and music, it's talking about them.

GUITAR WORLD: Is Sex And Religion a concept album?

Not as much as Passion And Warfare was. It's different because the new record has lyrics. With an instrumental you can go off into endless discussions about what the melody means. But when you write lyrics, it's much more straight-ahead. The concept, though, was that I wanted to do a record with a vocalist and some players with strong, identifiable styles. I wanted to do something that had definite rock elements to it but was also twisted, like the stuff I normally do.

Why did you want to work with a vocalist this time?

I've always used vocals, really, except for Passion And Warfare. It just seemed like a natural progression to return to a vocal approach. But that doesn't mean that everything I do in the future will have vocals. That's why I'll probably never be a million-selling artist -- because I'm always going to change my records. I mean, I've been working on a project for the spring of '94 that's going to be my music played by a 30-piece orchestra and a rock band. It's completely different from anything I've done before.

So each project takes on its own identity.

Yeah. The way I'm thinking now is maybe my next rock project will have no keyboards -- just bass, drums, guitar and vocals, with no overdubbing -- whereas I played a lot of keyboards on Sex And Religion.

How did you find the players for this project?

Well, I have five Hefty trash bags full of singers' tapes. They're all real cute, they all sing really well and they all write nice, safe stuff. But Devin Townsend made this tape called Noisescapes that's just the hardest core industrial, heavy metal-but-melodic music imaginable. He's 20 now, but he was just 19 when he made the tape. He sent it to my record company [Relativity] and I got it through them. As soon as I heard one minute of Devin, I knew he was someone special. We got together at my place in Tahoe. It was just me, him and my engineer Liz, rolling in the snow and jumping in my jacuzzi. He has a really great attitude. He's willing to try anything. And he's really an extrovert -- you know, a great lead singer.

As for T.M. Stevens, I saw him in Spain, playing on a TV concert with Joe Cocker. I was burning my feet on the pavement, but I wouldn't get off because I was too busy watching T.M. I always knew he could play; I just didn't know he could play so well. And he had that look that I thought could really work. And Terry Bozzio; geez, I've always wanted to work with him. He's been my favorite drummer forever. He usually doesn't like rock and roll, so it was very odd that I could get him to do this project. But he did, and I think he kicked butt.

Did Devin play guitar on the album?

No, although he's a fabulous guitar player -- very smooth, with a lot of chops and facility. He's got this sweeping thing that's really phenomenal. He's probably going to play a lot of guitar live. But for the record, I just felt better doing all the guitars myself. I just said, "Here are the songs, let me overdub everybody." Maybe in the future I'll record more live jams. But I wanted to be real careful that this album didn't turn out sounding like fusion.

In terms of technique, did this set of songs demand anything new of you?

Well, this is really the furthest possible thing from a solo guitar album, but there's a song called "Rescue Me Or Bury Me," with a big, long, meandering five-minute guitar solo [laughs]. I touched on a really weird technique there, where you hit a note, pull up on the whammy bar and then play a melody -- with the bar pulled up. Then you depress it on a strategic note and play with the bar depressed. You use the bar to reach pitches as part of a melody: you play with the bar raised and depressed. It's very difficult. You have to have stunning intonation, for one thing. What's cool about it is that you can get some note bends that sound very unnatural on guitar.

Another thing I did at the very beginning of that solo was to play with my fingers instead of a pick, which I usually don't do. And I realized that it sounds very much like Jeff Beck if you do that.

Because he plays with his fingers.

Exactly. So it wasn't hard to get Jeff Beck tones. That's something I only touched on in that song, and I'd like to explore it some more. Also on there, I do this thing where I play the same two notes on every string. [Vai demonstrates, playing a G sharp to F sharp pull-off, first on the high E string (fourth to second frets), then on the second, third, fourth and fifth strings, moving up and down the fretboard, sliding into each pull-off] When done fluently, it sounds really unnatural.

The notes are the same, but the different thickness of each string provides timbral variations.

Yeah, it's like an audible illusion. Here's another technique I used on there. [He plays a riff that involves using three different fingers in rapid succession to fret the same note: i.e., an F sharp triplet on the second fret of the high E string, played with the second, third and fourth fingers.] If it works properly you get all these weird little grace notes.

On the song "Touching Tongues," you play some very high harmonics. How were those achieved?

That's a Digitech Whammy Pedal in conjunction with a delay. You hit two notes [sings: F sharp, D sharp] and you release so that the echo takes over and creates a harmony over the next two notes. Most people get hold of a Whammy Pedal and what do they do? They grab it and go whhhheeeeeee....

The same thing they do with a whammy bar.

Yeah, but there are so many more musical things you can do.

So on that solo, are you fretting harmonics or just hitting regular notes?

Hitting regular notes. It's a very cool sound.

The overtones are celestial.

What happens is I have the Whammy pedal set to an octave or higher, so when you play a C sharp way up on the high E string and you hit that pedal, the overtones go up into the stratosphere, you know? I'm afraid it's going to break a lot of fingers, when kids try to figure it out. You can just see them doing all these wild things.

Don't try this one at home, kids.

Yeah, be careful. It's very simple in reality. That was just a very simple sound that I heard before I even plugged in the guitar. I knew exactly what it was going to do; I've been waiting a long time to use that particular effect.

You're known for using meditation to help discipline yourself in your guitar playing. Was that an element on this record?

Well, I think we all meditate. I first became aware of meditating -- I'll call it "external meditation" -- when I was transcribing for Frank Zappa. I'd find myself using a different part of my mind. When you concentrate wholly and intently on something without letting your consciousness waver, you really start to enter a new world. That would happen when I transcribed, and also when I practiced, because I would really concentrate hard on some guitar technique. When you can actually focus without distractions -- which is very difficult -- you can get the results you want. I think there were moments on this particular record that were the products of meditation.

I think that's true of any artist. I don't single myself out. But all that is just one form of meditation. The important kind of meditation, I feel, is when you take all that energy and focus it within yourself. That's believed to be so by more than half the people in the world. It's just unfortunate that this half doesn't happen to live in the United States.

Meditation is not just a means to an end for you? Like, "I can play faster guitar if I do this.... "

Oh, no, no. Music is great; I love it dearly. But that is a means to an end for me. My end is not being able to play the guitar fantastically. I mean, I know how to do that -- or at least I've briefly touched on great playing at times. But as much as guitar playing is dear to me, it's not the most important thing in life.

What would happen if I were to lose my hands? You can lose all that crap. You can go deaf, lose your eyes.... Then what? How good is your guitar playing? What do you have? You only have yourself -- your consciousness. So my next round of battle is not going to be with the guitar. It's going to be with myself and my consciousness. That's the one thing that's always with you.

Leaving metaphysics aside, Sex And Religion is a harmonically adventurous album. You seem to be using modes that one doesn't usually hear in rock and roll.

That's another thing I can't help. You're gonna hear modes in there that you never heard on any other record or any other type of music, simply because I made them up out of synthetic scales. Like the end of "Deep Down In The Pain" -- that really weird birth sequence. What's happening is that a child is coming out of the womb, you know? He's hearing the voice of divinity and asking questions and all this weird stuff. But what you hear in the background is all this wild music based on a scale I devised.

A new scale?

Yeah; I call it the "Xavian" scale. What I did was take the 12-tone row and make sampled notes of it on the keyboard. Then what I like to do is experiment with different temperaments. [Ed. Note -- The 12-note European tempered scale is only one way of dividing up the frequency range between octaves. Different systems exist in other cultures and in the work of composers like LaMonte Young and Wendy Carlos. Some modern synthesizers offer alternate temperaments.]

I have this book where I keep all these different scales, where I divided the octave up into different steps -- like maybe 9 or 10 equal steps. I call these scales "fractals." At the end of "Deep Down In The Pain" I used a scale that's based on dividing the octave into 16 equal steps, instead of the 12 steps of the conventional tempered scale. So each half-step within that is not quite a conventional half-step -- it's 60 microsteps as opposed to 100 microsteps. Instead of calling it a half-step, I call it a "quasar."

Then the "whole step" is 120 microsteps, instead of200. Instead of calling it a whole step, I call that a "nova." All these different intervals create the Xavian scale, a 10- note scale that I extracted from this 16-note row. You take this scale and play chords with it and it's like divine dissonance, because all the intervals are twisted.

Every six notes or so, you run across a tempered interval. But for the most part, these are not tempered intervals, so you get a whole structure of harmonics that is just eerie and unique. You know how every chord conjures up a different mood? Even to the most casual listener, a major ninth chord will create a different feeling than a minor ninth, or a major ninth with a sharp 11th. Imagine the twisted world of emotions you can open up from the Xavian scale! We human beings are so shaped by music in our evolution. I think that as more people get into experimenting with these fractals, a whole different emotional state of mind will result -- one that is probably on a par with the way our evolution is going anyway. But I don't think you'll ever hear Metallica jamming on the Xavian scale.

If they read this, maybe they'll get into it.

I'll lend Kirk my 16-fret guitar. You can't do this stuff on a conventional fretted instrument. I have a guitar that has 16 frets to the octave. Steve Ripley built it for me years ago. He also built me one with 24 divisions to the octave.

So you've been experimenting with this for some time?

Oh, yeah. He built me those guitars about eight years ago.

Are there any other recordings of yours with Xavian scales or the like on them?

No. But there are a couple of weird things. There's a song called "Chronic Insomnia" on Flexable Leftovers, where I recorded eight different passes of the same melody. Each time I just tweaked the tape speed a little bit, so I ended up with a melody where each note spans an entire half-step. It's a very dense, eerie-sounding thing. Incidentally, I'm probably going to be remixing Flexable Leftovers and all my other stuff from that period and putting it all onto one disc.

What's also interesting about "Still My Bleeding Heart" is that little orchestral section before the solo.

That's another thing I couldn't stop myself from doing. I've got this nice song going along. Everybody's saying, "Yeah, man, nice chorus, nice hook." So I figured I had to do something to twist it. I love the way melodies work against awkwardly moving chords. So that section is just a case of taking a melody and reharmonizing it. It goes through a progression of major ninth chords and dominant seventh/sharp fifth chords. I mean, the jazz guys have been doing stuff like that for years.

Yet you said earlier that you wanted to avoid a fusion mood.

Well, what I meant by that was that you can do bad fusion. For me, fusion is like disco: it's a certain taste. I like taking little pieces of it, because the fusion thing was a big part of my upbringing and I think there are nice little moments you can get from fusion. I think that a particular two-bar phrase in the scheme of a six-minute song works very nicely. But a whole song with all these meandering augmented ninth chords -- maybe that would be too much like fusion.

Like eating too much crème brulee.

Very well put. [laughs] Crème brulee!

I read somewhere that you do almost all your recording at night.

Well, you see how it is around here during the day -- all the phone calls and faxes and Fed Ex deliveries. Can you imagine trying to get any serious recording done with all that going on? So what I do is wake up when business hours are over and start to work. I wake up at five o'clock in the afternoon, and work around the clock until nine or 10 in the morning, when everybody else is starting to get up and go to work. This way I get a lot more done.

Just like Frank Zappa.

Yes. Well, what Frank does is work 'til he can't stand it any more, and then goes to sleep. He's always done that. I'm a little easier on myself. Your body can adjust if you stay up maybe two extra hours a night. I just kept doing that until I reached the time frame that I liked. But yeah, I saw Frank working through the night and I thought it was cool; I discovered its benefits. But it also has its drawbacks. My family is up when I'm asleep, and if you want something at four in the morning, you're in trouble, because nothing is open and nobody' s around. You gotta make sure you got all your food and everything. It's like a camping trip every day.

There's something else that you do that reminds me a little of Frank: It seems that you're always recording incidental little conversations, and things that happen around the studio, and putting them on your records.

Yeah! That was something about Frank's music that I always loved -- all those weird little things in between the songs. Maybe I did get that from Frank; I don't know. It's certainly something I was always attracted to. He does it great, though. He's the total king of that stuff.

Have you seen him recently?

Yeah, I saw him just the other day. He called me up and I went up to his house. There's an orchestra he's going to be writing for, called the Orchestre Moderne. His composition "The Yellow Shark" was performed in Vienna and Frankfurt recently; I saw three performances of it and it was really great. Now Frank wants to put them together with Terry Bozzio and me to do all of Frank's hardest material, like "Sinister Footwear" "Mo And Herb's Vacation" and all the renditions of "The Black Page," which is probably going to be one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced on guitar. But it'll be cool, because I've got my hammering a lot more together now. Playing all those weird melodies, trying to pick every note, is impossible. Hopefully, this will take place in the fall of '94. That's what we're shooting for.

Besides yourself, who is your favorite guitarist to have played with Frank Zappa?

Oh, I like Adrian Belew. He's always doing great stuff. And Denny Walley plays great slide. And although I don't know much of what Warren Cucurullo did with Frank, I just called Warren the other day because I thought what he did on the new Duran Duran record was really great. So I like those guys. Who else was there, really?

Mike Keneally.

Apart from one rehearsal, I never saw Mike with Frank. But when I saw him do Frank's stuff at the "Zappa's Universe" tribute in New York, I was pretty impressed. He does all that weird melody stuff that I did. Maybe he even does it better.

What kind of guitar tone did you have in mind for Sex And Religion?

I put a lot of research into that. The only way to really tell the way any piece of equipment sounds is to bring it into the studio, record something with it, then record it again with a competitive piece of gear on an adjacent tape track and NB them, which is what I did. I went to ridiculous lengths to compare instruments, amplifiers, microphones, strings and everything else I used on the album. I mean, I filled the room with amplifier heads. Name one -- it was in there. And all the preamps. I decided on my Marshall Heritage head for the majority of the sounds -- what I call a Heritage, anyway. It's a JCM-900. I used that mixed with the ADA MP-1 preamp. I chose a VHT power amp, which is a real workhorse, and real metal sounding. The cabinet I went with was a Marshall slant-top with 30-watt Celestions.

Did you do anything similar for guitars?

Yeah. You're gonna love this. I wanted to design a new guitar for myself and for Ibanez, based on the Jem -- because the Jem for me is the ultimate weapon. The new one was designed to satisfy my little idiosyncrasies; the way I play. [Vai disappears and returns momentarily with a white Jem-style guitar with gold hardware.] In the past, I was never concerned about things like wood or the pickups or the sound of the tremolo. But I decided to find out what all these things really contribute to the sound. I had Ibanez make me all these different guitars; I had them going crazy. We started experimenting with body wood.

Originally I had a basswood body, and I had them make me identical guitars with alder and maple bodies. I recorded all three and did the AJB test. What I noticed was that the maple was very bright. The alder is a little warmer, and that is the one I like. The basswood sounds thinner. So this is an alder body [brandishes guitar]. Then we started experimenting with necks. I found that a thicker neck usually has better resonance. But I like the way a thinner neck feels. So I just made a compromise there.

There was a lot of talk about the whammy bar -- whether it has a different sound when it's floating or when it's mounted so that you can't pull up on it. I had them make me one of each: with the exact same wood, pickups and everything. To be perfectly honest, I don't notice a difference in sustain. The big difference is in the playing. With a floating tremolo system, there's a good chance you're going to have this problem: [Illustrates how the pitch wavers due to palm pressure on the bridge]. I can't stand that. It's so hard to deal with. Plus, when you bend a note the other strings bend too. So we put this in the guitar. [Turns the guitar around to show the tremolo compartment.] There's a little device here that keeps the bar taut at a certain position; then, if you want to go sharp, you have to pull a little harder.

So you've got a separate set of smaller springs in there just for the pull ups.Yeah. And you adjust it. It's easy to tune up, because it doesn't float all over the place every time you change a string. And I can still wind the bar up -- do whatever I want with it.Did you experiment with the pickups as well?I thought you'd never ask. The first decision was whether to mount the pickups directly into the body or into the pickguard. We tried both, and I chose to have them mounted to the pickguard. It seemed to have a better bottom end that way, and better resonance. As for the pickups themselves, I'm afraid I put poor DiMarzio through hell. Oh man, poor Steve Blucher [design engineer at DiMarzio] has a few grey hairs on him that say "Vai." We designed about six different pickups that I liked, all named after Harley Davidson engines. And the ones that are in this particular guitar now I call the "Evolutions." They've got a lot of bottom end and a lot of top end. They're a little shrill, so you have to sometimes tweak the EQ on your amp, but they have a presence to them that a lot of pickups don't have.And of course you've got humbuckers in the bridge and neck positions and a single-coil in the middle position.Right. But this guitar is unique in its pickup selection. In the second position on the pickup selector, the bridge humbucker becomes a single-coil and it's on in conjunction with the middle pickup. In the fourth position it's the same thing, only with the neck pickup. So I can get that real Stratty "in-between" sound which I love but usually can't get on a humbucker guitar.Getting back to the album, what kind of unique difficulties did you encounter in writing vocal songs?I suppose the need to come up with strong pop hooks is a big one. Like that song "In My Dreams With You" -- that hooky pop chorus actually comes from a song written by a friend of mine, a guy named Roger Greenwald. He's a really good guitar player and producer. It's part of a song he wrote back when I was in college, and I've always wanted to do something with it. I basically re-wrote the whole song, structure-wise, and then got together with Desmond Child to work on the lyrics. Desmond is really a unique lyricist. A lot of people just think of him as the king of schmaltzy pop, because he made a lot of money for all these bands like Bon Jovi and Aerosmith. But he's capable of doing anything really. We worked on a few things, although "In My Dreams With You" is the only one that made it to this album.Did Devin have any input with regard to the lyrics?Yeah. We wrote "Pig" together. That's a great song. Pretty weird, eh?It's out there.You want to hear something funny? "Pig" came about because I was watching the Black Crowes on MTV one day. I like the Black Crowes. They were playing that song "Remedy," and I thought it was a great song -- a real nice party song. I said. "Man, I need a song like that: something really straight-ahead that everybody can relate to and sing along." So I went and wrote "Pig." Sorry folks, I can't help myself. Plus I was listening to Pantera at the time, which I think is an incredible band. Diamond Darrell man, he's my new favorite guitar player. He's out of his mind. He's got this totally unique, razor-blade tone. And that album is probably the loudest-mixed record in existence. And it's just a free-for-all of chaotic harmonies. I wanted to go and play with them when they came to town, but I was out of town.Who else do you dig these days?Reeves Gabrels. I saw him play with Tin Machine and it was one of the most enjoyable guitar concerts I've seen. Because he's so out there, man. He's got that really crazy, nervous vibrato. And he'd probably write something just as left-field as "Pig" if he tried to write a song like "Remedy" too.Tell me, why is the album called Sex And Religion?Oh, a lot of reasons. "Sex" and "religion" are two very powerful words. The sex of religion is like the passion of warfare. Sex in its purest form is where two individuals find an intimate relationship with God at the forefront of their consciousness, you know? It's the divine act of love. Then on the other end of the spectrum you get the perversion of lust. It goes as far as things like murder and whatnot. I think most of us fall somewhere in between.
It's the same thing with religion. The basis of religion is pure inspiration, where one individual came along and realized God and then tried to give his instructions to the world. But then that gets all twisted to suit the needs of the ego and the people involved. At the core of all religion and at the core of all sex, there's love. It's just interesting to see how that gets perverted and transformed. I mean, religion has been one of the biggest causes of war in history. I don't condemn any religion, don't get me wrong. I even think there are probably some very true evangelists out there, who are very inspired. But then there's guys out there who are trying to make money. They sell the promise of hope for money. And believe me, there's nothing so dangerous on the face of God's beautiful blue earth as a religious pervert. So anyway, I just find those two concepts very intriguing. Plus a lot of people are really hung up over sex and religion.

As a guitarist, singer, musician and composer, Devin Townsend has done and seen it all.

After starting out in the early 1990s as the singer in Steve Vai’s band, Townsend then went on to form the band Strapping Young Lad, releasing five albums between 1995 and 2006. After that band was dissolved, Townsend went on to form the Devin Townsend Project, releasing a series of four individual albums of different moods. The first two albums, Ki and Addicted were released in 2009. The final two albums in the series, Deconstruction and Ghost, were released back in June.

In addition to releasing two full studio albums this year, Townsend is going to be on tour in the US in October and Europe in November. On the tour, Townsend plans on playing some of the albums in their entirety to be recorded for an upcoming box set.

Guitar World recently caught up with Townsend to talk about his recent albums, the writing process and his future plans.

GUITAR WORLD: You released two albums this year (Deconstruction and Ghost) on the same date. Was there ever any thought of releasing them as a double album or did you always plan on the two separate releases?

The whole "Devin Townsend Project" is four records. Originally, it was a theme I was hoping to fit onto a single disc. It just seemed like this particular period of my career would be best spent trying to represent myself as somebody who does a lot of different things, and the versatility of it became the goal to represent. I think the best way I decided to do that was to split it up into four very distinct categories. Originally it was going to be all done within a year-and-a-half period, but then the touring came and it just sort of ended up expanding over a two-and-a-half, three-year period. So Deconstruction and Ghost were the last three and four, and now that it’s done, I hope to be able to make future music that hopefully just merges it into a smaller amount of records. (laughs)

Was the idea of releasing two vastly different albums more to represent your interest in different styles or were you trying to appeal to fans of each style independently?

Yeah, I think with Strapping Young Lad, and what I’ve done in the past, it’s very obviously and understandably put me into this category of being this heavy metal guy and all that. Definitely enjoy that, like no question, right? I think a lot of the reasons why, at the end of my contract with Strapping Young Lad, I disbanded it is, what I hope to do in the future is make real theatrical and orchestral music on one hand and then very subtle sort of clean guitar- and bass-oriented sort of other music. Having just that outlet, that was becoming more and more popular just started to become a little worrisome in terms of being able to represent that when I’m 40 (laughs) and onward.

I listened to Ghost first and then Deconstruction. It’s a big change, style-wise. Did you record the albums one at a time or different songs at different times?

Well, I kind of mixed it up. When it came to the actual brass tacks of completing each record, it was definitely one at a time. During the writing of it, I find that one thing to the exclusion of everything else just ends up becoming very tiresome. That goes both ways, so there’d be a moment, for example, when I was working on a song for Deconstruction, like "Pandemic" or some such thing. I remember looking at the computer screen, going "You know what? I just totally don’t want to hear this type of thing right now." I’d pick up an acoustic guitar and start strumming away.

Some of the music and instrumentation on Ghost sounds like it could be in a movie. "Juular" on Deconstruction has a little bit of a Danny Elfman kind of vibe going on. Were you influenced by any composers during the writing/recording of the record?

Well, I think the thing is I’ve been looking for an opportunity to write for movies and compose for musicals. I was so into the whole Andrew Lloyd Webber type of thing when I was kid, listening to the Star Wars soundtracks and things like that. But again, I think a lot of my move away from Strapping Young Lad and those types of scenarios has a lot to do with my future goal of being able to represent myself as someone who’s capable of writing for movies or musicals or whatever.

Did you write out the music for the more orchestral sounding parts or did you bring in people to help compose parts for those songs?

Yeah, I wrote it all The thing is, and I think it’s a blessing one way, is that I’m not theoretically knowledgeable. I’ve been in open C tuning for so many years, and that’s my main writing instrument, of course, the guitar. In Pro Tools what I’ll do is write a song and go, "OK, the melody goes like this and then the trumpets would do this and then the choir would do this."

And so I sketch it out and then I send it to people who are friends of mine who listen to it and say, "OK, well there’s a G and there’s a B and then the choir’s doing this and I notice you’ve got a low voice here and that’ll be the bass," and they orchestrate it for the people in the orchestra and choirs that do read music. Because if I had sent them, the orchestra and choir, what I think it would look like on paper, it would look like hieroglyphics. (laughs)

There’s a lot of multi-instrumentation on Ghost. How many actual instruments are you playing on the record(s)?

Well, everything really. I think I’ve been playing bass for as long as I’ve played guitar, and I love them both. I’m sitting here talking to you with a Tele in my hand and a half an hour before I was thumping away on a fretless. Both those instrument and voice are my main compositional tools, I suppose. I play keyboards and Pro Tools, if you want to look at it as an instrument. As a drummer, I’m rhythmically so disabled that it’s hilarious. I’ve got one-way independence. (laughs)

The albums have completely different moods. When you were recording them, did you try for different tones and sounds through different gear for each record, or did you just try to get different sounds out of the same gear?

I think a lot of the fun of making records, for me, is making each one of them a situation. For example, with Ghost, I found a group of people that had an energy together and we kind of did it in a cabin somewhere. I thought, "For this I want to use an acoustic, and what types of acoustics do I want to use?" or "What sort of effects do I want to use?" With Ki, it was very much the same thing. "Well, I hear a real clean guitar" and that ultimately led me to this old basement and this '57 Twin that was really cool. Then all of a sudden to get those certain types of delay, it led me to like a tape echo and single-coil, low-output pickups and all that. Each record has its own sort of rabbit hole that I think is a lot of fun to follow and defines a lot of energy of the record.

I read that you’re going to be performing all four albums live over in Europe later this year. Have you had to work out any technical issues with performing such complex albums in a live setting?

The guitar thing is one thing. It’s like four separate bands, and the visuals and the sound and budget constraints and all this sort of stuff. Without me making it sound like the drama that it actually is, man, it’s a nightmare.

As I was listening to it, I was thinking, "I don’t know how he’s going to pull this off live."

Nor do I, in all honesty. (laughs)

Besides the recording of the concerts, can you say what else you plan on including in your upcoming box set?

Well, the box set is just finished. It’s a 70-page hardcover book and it’s the size of an LP. It’s got eight discs in it. It’s got the four Devin Townsend Project discs; Ki,Addicted, Deconstruction and Ghost. Plus four additional discs with bonus tracks, demos, live concert footage, all the videos, production commentaries, Pro Tools sessions for people to remix. It’s a pretty comprehensive overview.

I’ve been kind of hacking away in sort of quasi-obscurity for so long that I’m hoping this box set at least shows and all these DVDs and this stuff will allow me to kind of be able to step out of that box a little bit. Because what I’m hoping to do in the future is to make unrelenting, uncompromising, emotional music of all sorts with complete disregard to whatever is commercially successful. Except in my little fantasy world here, it’s done with the same sort of production values as an Ashlee Simpson concert (laughs). Regardless of whether or not that comes to fruition, it’s good to have goals.

For more about Townsend, his recent albums and upcoming tour dates, click here.

The Devin Townsend Project will be hitting the road this fall. You can find the confirmed tour dates below.

The support bands for the tour will be announced shortly, and the band also promises that the trek will include dates in Canada. Pre-sale for the tour begins August 1. You can find more info at Townsend's website.

Townsend simultaneously released the albums Deconstruction and Ghost via InsideOut Music on June 20.

Devin Townsend Project Fall Tour Dates

• Oct. 12-Sound Stage-Baltimore, MD
• Oct. 13-The Note-Philadelphia, PA
• Oct. 14-Rock And Shock-Worcester, MA
• Oct. 15-The Chance-Poughkeepsie, NY
• Oct. 16-The Altar-Pittsburgh, PA
• Oct. 17-Peabody's-Cleveland, OH
• Oct. 18-Harpo's-Detroit, MI
• Oct. 19-Reggie's-Chicago, IL
• Oct. 21-Black Sheep-Colorado Springs, CO
• Oct. 22-Marquis-Denver, CO
• Oct. 24-Troubadour-Los Angeles, CA
• Oct. 25-Slim's-San Francisco, CA
• Oct. 27-Hawthorne-Portland, OR
• Oct. 28-El Corazon-Seattle, WA

In tandem with the release of the Devin Townsend Project's Deconstruction and Ghost albums, Townsend's label, InsideOut, is offering free download of a 10song compilation for a limited time.

The compilation features tracks taken from all of his albums released on InsideOut.

You can download the compilation at this location.

Compilation track listing:

'By Your Command' (Ziltoid)
'Christeen' (Infinity)
'Coast' (Ki)
'Deadhead' (Accelerated Evolution)
'Life' (Ocean Machine)
'Material' (Physicist)
'Mountain' (Terria)
'Sit In The Mountain' (Infinity demo)
'Supercrush' (Addicted)
'Vampira' (Synchestra)

AOL are currently streaming the two new albums from The Devin Townsend Project, Deconstruction and Ghost, in their entirety as part of their Full CD Listening Party.

You can listen to both albums here.

Townsend will release the two albums — which are the third and fourth in a series of albums to be made available under The Devin Townsend Project banner — on June 21 via InsideOut Music.

Gojira, who are working on both a new EP and a new album, have released a new song titled "Of Blood And Salt." The track will be featured on a sampler that will accompany an upcoming issue of Metal Hammer.

Fans who've been waiting for new Gojira music since 2008's The Way of All Flesh should be more than happy with this track, which, by the way, features Meshuggah's Fredrik Thordendal and Devin Townshend making guest appearances.

Gojira have stated that their latest EP, Sea Shepherd, would feature several guest appearances from big names in the metal world. Sea Shepherd still has no official release date.

Check out the song below, and let us know what you think in the comments!