Vocalist/guitarist/producer DEVIN TOWNSEND has issued a brief update via his official Facebook page, hinting at more big things to come:

"Eighty page hardcover book, eight discs, special versions, no holds barred in terms of quality. Sick, immense project involving everyone here. While assembling boxset material, had a bit of a brainstorm: EPICLOUD, then Z2.

Z2 will be immense. Things work on autopilot apparently..."

Z2 is, of course, a reference to Townsend's continuation to Ziltoid The Omniscient. Stay tuned for more updates, coming soon.

Townsend is featured in a new interview with Metal Army America. An excerpt is available below:

MAA: I believe there is a companion to Ghost coming out soon on the horizon, right?

Townsend: "Absolutely! Ghost II, which in its current name is incredibly creative (laughs sarcastically). We’ve been working on the art work and I’m taking my time with it. It is essentially done and mixed. But I’m on tour and I’m going to be on tour for a long time. I want the records that I do not only from here on out, but including Ghost II to be thought out in the same way I was able to with these four records. Otherwise it would be just another disc, right? I've written a few more songs for this record so I hope by the end of the year it will be available. It’s a darker, kind of more somber take on the Ghost energy."

MAA: Will we ever see the Ziltoid character return again in some way, shape or form?

Townsend: "Ziltoid I think is rapidly becoming the mascot for what I do. It’s great for me on a number of levels I think. I love playing the character and it’s an extension of an exaggerated part of my personality that I think I felt self-conscious of doing before I quit doing certain lifestyle choices. But with Ziltoid its very creative and free. You know to be a fan of a human being is cool and everything. I know when I was younger there were certain people in bands I was really a fan of. And then as you get older you realize as you well know everybody is a human being and everybody is fallible. Everybody is an idiot trying to figure it all out. Everybody has their own hypothesis on what it is or what it isn’t, but ultimately none of us know. But everybody needs a hero too. I don’t want to be that hero, but I think that Ziltoid can be a very cool superhero because he’s from the fourth dimension and he’s a combination of backyard quantum physics and poop jokes. I think the combo of those two things for me is artistically full of potential (laughs)."

Click here for the complete interview.

In tandem with the release of the Devin Townsend Project's Deconstruction and Ghost albums, InsideOut is offering free download of a 10 song Devin Townsend compilation for a limited time featuring tracks taken from all his albums issued by the label over between 1997 - 2009. It is only available here in cooperation with Facebook and Twitter.

The tracklist is as follows:

'By Your Command' (Ziltoid)

'Christeen' (Infinity)

'Coast' (Ki)

'Deadhead' (Accelerated Evolution)

'Life' (Ocean Machine)

'Material' (Physicist)

'Mountain' (Terria)

'Sit In The Mountain' (Infinity demo)

'Supercrush' (Addicted)

'Vampira' (Synchestra)

As previously reported, during an interview with BW&BK;'s Carl Begai covering his Deconstruction and Ghost albums, Townsend offered some details about his next project, Epicloud. An excerpt from that discussion is available below:

Anything Townsend turns out is bound to be a surprise in the end regardless of pre-release hints and descriptions, and Epicloud is no exception. He does his best to illustrate his intentions, and lets fly with one totally unexpected revelation guaranteed to get jaws flapping once they’ve been yanked off the floor; Epicloud will feature the star of his Addicted record, AGUA DE ANNIQUE vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen.

“This next thing I’m writing, I’m writing for her," says Townsend. "The next bout of material… the drama, the metaphors, the complications and all the heavy shit that went along with the past four or five records have been worked out as far as I can see. Even when I was making Deconstruction and Ghost, I remember thinking that I didn’t really need on an artistic level to make it so dense and so challenging to listen to. So, the stuff that I’ve written now is highly melodic and has very simple structures. I’m finding that what’s coming out naturally now, the guitars are still heavy and it’s still got that epic sound, but it’s very different for me vocally. There’s no screaming; it’s melodic and ethereal-sounding vocals.”

“When it comes to playing live, I think I’ve got a really strong voice for what I want to put across. Specifically in the studio; I can do what I need to do, but my voice isn’t very resilient when it comes to performing live. So I find that after two or three weeks of touring most of my daily struggle is to make my voice not sound like it’s completely bagged. With the new stuff, hopefully I’m going to write all the heavy and hard singing parts for Anneke (laughs).

Go to this location for the complete interview.