Devin Townsend’s 22nd album was meant to be fun: a record full of primal riffs and mammoth choruses. But when tragedy repeatedly struck during its writing, the effervescent Canadian was forced to take stock. His grieving process has translated into PowerNerd, his most honest, vulnerable and challenging record yet.
Take Devin Townsend's 22nd studio album at face value and you’ve got one of prog’s most hardworking, tirelessly anthemic songwriters going gung-ho at party metal anthems. But to scrape the surface is to pay PowerNerd a disservice.
Its outer linings may have more in common with fist-pumping stadium rock anthems than King Crimson, but dig a bit deeper and you'll find Hevy Devy at his most exposed after his plans for the record unravelled at the seams. The most extroverted of settings ended up being the perfect environment for Townsend to come to terms with his grief.
PowerNerd is the first of a trio of records that present the man behind the music in a near-autobiographical way. It was dreamt up as a light-hearted “appetiser” before, in his own words, “the orchestral musical craziness of The Moth and the ambient loop-based weirdness of Axolotl .” Together, they will paint a picture of Townsend’s multi-dimensional musical DNA.
As the old adage goes, though, the best-laid plans of a Canadian progger often go awry and, while Townsend was riffing away in his home studio, his life turned upside down. “Circumstances dictated that my life went absolutely tits up,” he says. “I thought it was just going to be a fun little party record, but it ended up being so emotionally intense; my grief started leaching into the music. It became a collision of two things that summarises my personality in ways that maybe some of the other records don’t.
“On one hand,” he continues, “it’s a simple record: it’s Motörhead riffs and Bon Jovi choruses. But on the other, it was the soundtrack to this period of my life that just had a lot of loss. The combination was not what I expected. By the time I got to the [penultimate] song Goodbye, I was so fucking broken by the experience of losing people.”
Townsend has never shirked away from discussing his mental health in interviews or in his music, but it's never been presented like it is on PowerNerd. Much of its instrumental nucleus remains, with signature Devin guitar work and top-of-the-mountain choruses aplenty, but those elements are blended with the grappling with grief.
“The whole idea is the record follows the process of ‘How do you get through losing someone?’” he explains. “You can’t just stop working. So you get through it. Each song progressively goes through that. It wasn’t planned – it just happened.
A big part of the process of losing someone was gaining this different view of myself
“Glacier is about the death of somebody, and then Goodbye is when you make peace with it. I think, for much of my life, I haven’t processed these emotions. I could turn it into work because of my tendency to get hyper-focused on projects; I hadn’t recognised I’d repressed so many of those emotions. So when the dam started to crack, I had to surrender to it.
“I always thought you could intellectualise things and just keep things under wraps – but when it wants to come out, it does, and it did during the making of the record. There were moments where I didn’t think the record was going to happen. But I hope that the process of going through the record and experiencing the stages of grief is of some use to people. It was to me.”
PowerNerd stands as a manifesto for powering through adversity and turning what can be perceived as weaknesses – such as Townsend’s hypersensitivity to emotions – into superpowers. And as he soldiered on, lessons were learned of his larger-than-life self.
“So much of my career and my work has been complicated music: it’s lots of notes and complicated time signatures and crazy stuff. But a big part of the process of losing someone was gaining this different view of myself.
I went down all these rabbit holes with different ideas and sentiments, but they all sounded like I was lying
“I told myself I had my shit together – but I realised I was still a kid, I was still 15 years old. That’s why the music on this record became ironically appropriate. I grew up in a lower-middle class kind of area and we didn’t have a ton of money. The social scene was to go to a bonfire; you listened to AC/DC and Motörhead and it was girls and beer. Part of the honesty of this record was just like, ‘Oh, that’s where my lineage is, more so than a lot of the prog stuff that people would assume.’
“I didn’t listen to Gentle Giant, King Crimson or Genesis back then. So when I got sideswiped by life, I realised the stuff that I loved when I was 15 was coming out of me. It was a little strange to admit that, because that music has less social collateral for what people think is appropriate for a guy who writes prog.
“And so all my childhood, and all the loss and trauma, coalesced into this imperfect, perfect thing.”
In the quest to connect with his emotions, Townsend found his usually dense and exuberant production to be insincere. “It’s definitely still full of too much shit, like I normally do,” he admits. “But it was a conscious decision [to strip things back], for sure. I had lyrics written for it that were simple and dumb. But then I realised I actually don’t feel that way.
“The biggest problem was the verses – I couldn’t find an approach that seemed true enough. Typically what I do is I track four vocals, tune them and time-align them, and it’s this big pad of vocals. But every time I did that it sounded distant, emotionally, in a way that was in opposition to what was going on.
“By the end I was so pressed for time I ended up doing one vocal with a handheld mic without tuning it and without anything, and it just sounded so vulnerable. So I kept it. It was weird because I didn’t love how it sounded, but it was the only thing that sounded appropriate. I went down all these rabbit holes with different ideas and sentiments, but they all sounded like I was lying.
I couldn’t get a hold of him for about a month, then he’s like, ‘I joined Slipknot.’ It was the best excuse, to be honest
“After all the years of choirs and orchestras and 700 tracks and all this shit, I’m just like, ‘Guys, it’s been a rough few years. I’m a confused 15-year-old from Surrey.’ PowerNerd ended up being the most vulnerable thing that I think I could possibly have put out. And I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t some clever artistic move on my part. It’s just that my fucking life exploded while I was making a party record.”
With a crack in his voice, he adds, “It was a leap of faith in a lot of ways to do that. I realised I’ve been insecure about it for so many years. You can hide yourself behind the production and make yourself sound like a god on top of Mount Olympus slaying a dragon. But what my voice actually sounds like is the verses on PowerNerd – I’m a human being.
“And there’s a part of me that’s embarrassed. You want people to think of you as always being a powerhouse or whatever, but that’s not what I wanted with this, to be honest. A more direct nature seemed more fitting.”
Another thing to conspire against what should have been a joyous wham- bam-thank-you-ma’am of a record was the personnel, or, more accurately, the lack thereof. Former Sepultura drummer Eloy Casagrande had been lined up to track the drums. A guitarist, bassist and mixing engineer, too, were mooted, but all fell by the wayside.
“We had a date set for Eloy,” says Townsend. “We’d wanted to work together since forever. But suddenly I couldn’t get a hold of him for about a month, and then he’s like, ‘Oh, I joined Slipknot.’ It was the best excuse, to be honest. That’s amazing for him. But then I had about a week left before the tracking was supposed to start, so I didn’t know what to do.”
The plan for this to be the simplest record I’d ever done ended up being one of the opposite
Darby Todd, a regular in Townsend’s live bands who has also worked with Martin Barre and Frost*, was drafted at the last minute. “Darby flew in from London, we rehearsed for a day, and he tracked the record in two days. The guy’s a fucking maniac!” Townsend says with a grin. “It’s the third time he saved the day for me. When we did the Royal Albert Hall shows last year, he learned 50 songs, and he stepped in for Bloodstock in 2021 too. I can always rely on him.”
With drums locked in, Townsend ended up handling guitar, bass and mixing duties, despite not intending to fulfil any of those roles. “The plan for this to be the simplest record that I’d ever done ended up being arguably one of the opposite!” he says with a laugh.
Maybe it was a sign from the universe that he should take such an incredibly personal and transparent record into his own hands. Townsend’s emotions, be it on the dream-like balladry of Ubelia or the gritty hip-swinger Knuckledragger, seep into every crack.
As Goodbye turns from a beautifully sombre, oddly uplifting song into a swathe of reminiscing ambience – it’s a song that wouldn’t sound out of place on his much-lauded Ocean Machine record – Townsend, at last, makes peace with his tragedies. And then comes his most bonkers caricature self on Ruby Quaker, a song about the glory of coffee dressed in Broadway metal garbs.
Ruby Quaker wasn’t meant to be on the record. But after Goodbye, I couldn’t leave people like that
“The whole point with Ruby Quaker is that it doesn’t end there,” Townsend explains. “Loss and grief are a process of life. If you suppress it, it’s unhealthy. Once you allow yourself to grieve, it’s a new day. It wasn’t meant to be on the record. But after Goodbye, I couldn’t leave people like that. That’s actually not how life goes.”
Of the song’s origins, he explains: “My buddy showed up one morning and it was like, ‘Here, just have some breakfast, have a cup of coffee,’ and then all of a sudden, you start to see the other side of it.”
And so after a record of heavy emotions and adrenaline-fuelled music – a chalk-and-cheese contrast that only someone as ludicrous as Devin Townsend could make work – is a song with which to soak up the tears.
It’s proof that life never stands still, even when you want it to.
