After years of buildup and rumour, Devin Townsend has finally announced his project The Moth will debut onstage with a symphony orchestra next year.
The Canadian prog metal solo artist will perform the as-yet-unheard musical venture with the Noord Nederlands Orkest symphony orchestra in Groningen, Netherlands, on March 27. The show will reportedly be a global one-off.
Marketing materials say The Moth “tells the story of the human experience from birth to death, comparable to the transformation of a caterpillar into a moth”.
They elaborate: “It symbolises the human quest for meaning and offers perspectives on the fear of death through analogy and narrative. Ever since Townsend witnessed large musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Phantom Of The Opera in the 1970s, he has seen this project as his calling.”
Townsend famously started talking about The Moth in a 2016 interview with Vice, where he described the project as “this symphony with all these cocks and vaginas and death”. “The whole show is a metaphor for sex and power, and the idea of it all being related to some sort of God who’s ultimately futile,” he said.
He added: “[I]t’s gotta be so over-the-top, with symphonies and choirs and it’s got to include the best of the best and it’s so fucking expensive! I’d like to not think about money, but what I want to do is just get so much money, absurd amounts of money, and just put it all into this thing that’s a fundamentally unsellable spectacle, but make it so palatable that halfway through you’ll just be like, “The fuck are we watching here?”
Townsend estimated he’d need $10 million to bring the idea to life, and it proceeded to lay dormant for some time. In later interviews, the musician seemed to abandon the symphonic stage show concept, describing The Moth more as an era of his decades-long career than a tangible release or concert.
He told the Everblack podcast last year: “[At] this point Moth almost seems like a blanket term for a number of things, whether or not it’s a bunch of albums or a bunch of other media or it’s an Atmos thing or it’s characters or if it’s streaming – I don’t know what it is yet. But it seems like I’m calling this period of creative output, I just refer to it as The Moth, but I don’t know exactly what it’s gonna entail. I do know it’s a lot of shit though.”
Talk about The Moth restarted earlier this year, when Townsend announced his new solo album Powernerd. The musician revealed that Powernerd will be the first act in a trilogy of new releases, followed by The Moth and Axolotl. He described The Moth as “orchestral, over-the-top, dark and uncomfortable”.
Townsend will release Powernerd via Inside Out on October 25. He’ll tour the UK supporting Myles Kennedy in November. See dates below.
Devin Townsend 2024 UK tour (supporting Myles Kennedy):
Nov 25: Glasgow SWG3
Nov 27: Manchester Academy
Nov 29: Nottingham Rock City
Nov 30: Birmingham O2 Academy
Dec 02: Cardiff Great Hall
Dec 03: London O2 Forum Kentish Town
