"It hits with the kind of brilliant melodic punch he hasn’t delivered in years": Devin Townsend conjures up unexpected greatness on PowerNerd

Canadian maverick Devin Townsend releases his most straightforward album in years

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Devin Townsend: PowerNerd cover art
(Image: © InsideOutMusic)

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Devin Townsend is one of life’s over-thinkers, wrapping his albums in layers of conceptual and psychological detail.

By contrast, PowerNerd, his twenty-second solo album, is driven by pure instinct, deliberately written in a nine-day burst of creativity and sounding all the better for it.

Devin Townsend 'Gratitude' Official Promo Video - YouTube Devin Townsend 'Gratitude' Official Promo Video - YouTube
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Unpromising title aside, PowerNerd dispenses with any extraneous tooling around to hit with the kind of brilliant melodic punch he hasn’t delivered in years. His recognisable modern-metal wall-of-sound approach powers the title track and Falling Apart, but for once it doesn’t feel like he’s using it to hide the human heart of it all – Glacier and the truly spectacular Gratitude crackle with tangible emotion.

The grating, wacka-wacka humour is still there in that album title and the mugging, countrified ode to coffee Ruby Quaker, but it’s not enough to sink what is an unexpectedly and unadulteratedly great album.

Dave Everley
Dave Everley

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.