Repeat after me:

“Strapping Young Lad is dead.”

Swallow. Rinse. Repeat.

Folks can call it flogging a long dead horse, and rightly so considering vocalist/guitarist/producer Devin Townsend has stated time and time again that he has no more demons to exorcise. The fact that three of the four albums he’s released since his 2009 comeback following a two year hiatus haven’t strayed anywhere near SYL territory is further proof that particular chapter of his life is over. Townsend is focused on the future rather than the past. If you’re not convinced, attend a Devin Townsend Project show or spend a couple hours cruising live footage on YouTube. The man who hated touring (and it showed), meant every word of the Strapping song ‘You Suck’, and put Zakk Wylde to shame with his lethal F-bomb combinations on any given night, is having a blast. The snappy on-stage banter is a clear cut giveaway, as is the silver-grey Revenge Of The Nerds suit and the fan interaction that often ends with half the audience either dancing in the aisles or on stage with Dev himself.

“It’s great,” Townsend says of touring life. “Over the last five years specifically – and even since the last time we talked – there have been a lot of shifts in my perspective in terms of music and career and performance. The root of a lot of the drama in the past was very much an internal thing with me. I think my lack of desire to tour before, which I definitely attribute to Strapping based on the scene that band was involved with. It was good people, good friends, which amounted to a lot of partying and a lot of drugs. At the time I was thinking ‘It’s the touring that I don’t like.’ When I put myself in a position where that didn’t exist, where that wasn’t an element… I find that touring is a job, of course, but the playing comes really naturally to me. I didn’t realize during Strapping that the playing is a big part of my process. I really do enjoy it and I think that I’m pretty good at it. Sometimes being able to step away from things and seeing the forest through the tree is of immense value when it comes to recognize how to do those things more efficiently. Now when I’m on stage, I’m trying to figure out how to make things better in the future, how to we make it an event for people. To be perfectly honest, man, I’m really digging it. I enjoy it a lot.”

It’s a huge contrast from the Devin Townsend that was fronting Strapping Young Lad. Back then (1995 – 2006) he was a physical extension of the anger in the songs; now Townsend seems to be having enough fun for five people when he steps on stage.

“Totally. Among the things that I’ve mentioned, I think the most important factor of that is that now when we’re on tour there’s no drinking for me and there’s no drugs. Maybe for the other guys it’s a little different, but because that’s not really an option for me, my release is strictly the show. I think that’s a great motivator to make the show as intense as we can.”

Townsend has been on and off the road for the past year pushing his “this was me, this is where I’m going” tetralogy, kicked off by the mellow Ki record and yanked into motion with Addicted in 2009. At press time he was gearing up for the release of Deconstruction and Ghost, totalling four very different records that scared the hell out of a large part of his fanbase.

“It’s funny,” laughs Townsend. “I think of the whole process of these four records – and granted, I’m completely self-centered when it comes to why I write because I’m not catering to what people want (laughs) – a lot of it came down to confronting a fear I had of myself and my own process. I remember years ago, I was always second guessing what I did under the assumption of ‘How are people going to perceive this?’ These four records, the whole thing was saying ‘Fuck it.’ If I’m accountable to myself in terms of trying to be the best person I can be, if I let it flow naturally there’s no more that needs to be said. What I can say about these four records is that there’s nothing on them conceptually or lyrically that I can’t stand behind.”

Which brings Townsend to the point he’s been trying to make since the release of Ki; there won’t be another Strapping Young Lad album. Talk of Deconstruction being the heaviest, craziest music he’d ever written – a claim made by Townsend and several people around him – had fans thinking it would be SYL music under a different name. Turns out it’s anything but that.

“The thing I find funny and frustrating is that it’s almost like people didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t want to do Strapping anymore. For the past four years it’s been ‘Oh yeah, sure, you’ll be back…’ and I’m saying ‘Look guys, I’m not lying to you here.’ I’ve done Strapping to a point where I can’t do it anymore. There’s no ulterior motive, there’s no drama about it; I just don’t want to do it anymore because I don’t feel like writing like that anymore. Let me refine that; it’s not even that I don’t feel like it. I’ve changed so much that it’s impossible for me to write like that. That’s the truth. So, when Deconstruction was coming out I was telling people it was one of the heaviest and most chaotic things I’ve ever done, but it’s not Strapping. The reaction was ‘I can’t wait for it because I wanna hear more Strapping…’ and I was like, okay, let me tell you again… (laughs).”
“What Deconstruction represents for me, and what the project of doing all four records represents, is a sense of closure. It’s never going to be closure from the perspective of the people that still won’t listen. They’re just pounding their heads against a wall. What I wanted to do with these four records and impress upon people with Deconstruction is that I have changed, but if I was to do something that was heavy with the same intention of Strapping Young Lad when that’s who I was, this is what it would sound like in the now. The reason why I finished with Ghost is because I’m hoping to make very clear to people that regardless of my heavy intentions, it’s not what I want to do with my future. But I think I had to make a record like Deconstruction to put it forth to people; this is what I choose as heavy at this point because of how my life has changed. For the people that don’t want to accept that, there’s nothing I can say.”
“In terms of closure for me, I’ve now said all I can say. When it comes to what I do in the future, specifically this new record I’ve been writing, all bets are off. There’s no need, desire or chance of me pandering to the people who are unable to accept that change.”

Deconstruction at its core is heavier than anything Townsend recorded with Strapping Young Lad or anyone/anywhere else. One might not think so as the first two tracks (‘Praise The Lowered’, ‘Stand’) ease the listener into the album’s groove, but when ‘Juular’ drops in with its Willy-Wonka-in-hell Oompa Loompa march it’s clear the promises of something unique and volatile weren’t empty threats. By the time you reach the title track, Deconstruction has become the ultimate Townsend endurance test.

“And I think there’s this sadistic part of me that wanted to make that point,” says Townsend. “When people were telling me I had to do Strapping, I remember saying to people that the reason I don’t do it is because it was rooted in that very destructive, self-pitying frame of mind that a lot of people have when they’re in their 20s. Doing Strapping, particularly towards the end, was very unhealthy for me emotionally and even physically. I choose not to be unhealthy anymore.”
“With Deconstruction I was completely sober. I had a coffee every now and then, but dude, so-ber (laughs). On Thursdays I’d take the garbage out, and if the record got too intense I’d go and watch TV. There was no way I was going to allow the music to take control of me in the way it has in the past, and I think to underline that, what I tried to do was represent to the audience how in control of it I am. To the point that it’s overwhelming to some people to the extent they have to turn it off.”
“In the last song, ‘Poltergeist’, what I’m trying to say is, ‘Look, now that you see I’m capable of doing this, my point is I choose not to. Are we clear? Here’s Ghost.”

And after the Deconstruction experience, Ghost is a welcome chill pill. Townsend has come full circle with the record, returning to the organic approach that started with Ki.

“The thing is, I’ve been over this for quite some time now. When I say ‘over it,’ it doesn’t mean that I don’t think it’s valid or that it’s just not a part of my artistic life at the moment. The reason this project existed was to provide closure for me personally. Being able to explain it now that the albums are out is a really cool thing, but Ghost is almost the krux of this whole project. Deconstruction was supposed to blow you open and make you vulnerable to what comes next, and with Ghost I’m trying to say ‘I’m not a sadistic person.’ Of course I’ve got sadistic tendencies, because I’m human, but after blowing the audience open I choose to make something like Ghost almost as if to cement my intentions for the future.”
“I don’t want to hurt people with my music. I don’t want to contribute to the bullshit that society is kind of demanding of artists in a lot of ways. ‘Make it heavier, make it more destructive, make it this, that and the other thing…’ and with Deconstruction, even though there’s accountability with it, I’m saying ‘Of course I can be destructive’ but it’s not what you can do, it’s what you choose to do that matters as far as I’m concerned. That’s Ghost for you, and my hope is that people who don’t like the direction I’ve chosen and how I write naturally now, that they’ll throw their hands up in the air and say ‘I give up on him.’ So, by the time I release this next record, which is some commercial sounding shit, there’ll be no qualms about it. People won’t be saying – or shouldn’t be saying – ‘Why did he go that way?’ It was explained with these four records.”