By Tanja Caciur

March 30 at The Cable Factory in Helsinki, Finland:

It is still unclear why Finland gets so much love from DEVIN TOWNSEND. Last summer Finns were lucky to see the one-off world premiere of Ziltoid The Omniscient live show at Tuska Open Air. At the end of March 2011 Townsend came back with two of the four exclusive Devin Townsend Project shows that featured ANNEKE VAN GIERSBERGEN (ex-The GATHERING, AGUA DE ANNIQUE) on female vocals. This occasion was undoubtedly worthy of making the impossible departure from your computer screens: the Cable Factory was packed with nerds and other admirers of the crazy Canadian guitar genius. The Project’s logo was everywhere: on people’s t-shirts and hoodies, tattooed on their arms; Ziltoid merchandise was also present. In other words, the public was well prepared for two hours of worshipping to the cult of HevyDevy.

Except for Devin and Anneke, the show wouldn’t be complete without Ziltoid, of course. He (I assume it’s a ‘he’ since he was talking about his sweaty testicles) was the first one to appear on stage screens to the soundtrack of Vengabus by Vengaboys. After the green thing had its share of fun, Devin took over the stage and instantly whipped the nerds into an ecstatic frenzy with 'Addicted!' The front row headbanged and threw horns like this was literally the first and the last gig they will ever see.

Anneke fit perfectly into the whole picture. Her powerful voice and stage persona contrasted with Townsend in a kind of ‘beauty and the goofy beast’ manner, giving the zest to an already ridiculously brilliant show. She sang along Devin through 'Addicted!', 'Supercrush!', 'Numbered!' and 'Kingdom', leaving for a break after that, while Townsend continued his prog-metal onslaught.

During one of the banters something was thrown on stage. Surely it wasn’t a tomato or a rotten egg; instead it turned out to be a red heart. See, Devin, Finland loves you too! The public went into a collective “awww”- moment when Townsend was thanking people, holding the heart at this chest. However, when it was time to play again, he promptly hid the heart in his pants with a mischievous look only Devin can make.

Soon Anneke got back on stage for 'By Your Command', 'Hyperdrive!', 'Life' and an especially juicy performance of 'Bad Devil' with Devin showing off some intricate dance pas. However, the best moment was saved for the grand finale otherwise known as 'Bend It Like Bender!', when a small part of the crowd was let on stage. After receiving certain booty-shaking dance instructions from Townsend, they all threw a small party to the song, while some of the people were literally hanging on the poor singer-guitarist.

Nobody wanted to leave until Townsend announced from the stage that he would love to play more, but he has to go take a shit. Or at least that’s what I heard. Either way the show was over, and the DTP procession went on to melt the face off of Finland’s metal capital – Oulu. The next day Devin announced on Twitter that he will be headlining the second day of Tuska Open Air this year again. Hopefully this love affair will never end.

Set-list:

'Addicted!'*

'Supercrush!'*

'Numbered!'*

'Kingdom'*

'Deadhead'

'Truth'

'OM'

'By Your Command'*

'Hyperdrive!'*

'Life'*

'Earth Day'

'Bad Devil'*

'Color Your World'

'The Greys'

'Ki Jam'

'Deep Peace'

'Bend It Like Bender!'*

(*with Anneke van Giersbergen)

More photos from BraveWords.com's Jana Blomqvist can be found in a photo gallery here.