MetalTeamUK.net recently spoke to STRAPPING YOUNG LAD frontman/founder Devin Townsend about his latest solo creation, Ziltoid The Omniscient, and his decision to put SYL to rest. The following is a brief excerpt from the interview:

MTUK: Ziltoid – where the fuck did that come from?

DT: “Me and my buddies were in a basement drinking and partying, kind of wasted, and we decided we should all make puppets. So everyone had to make their own puppet and we all had socks and crayons and everything. There were four of us and I was like ‘I’m going to make an alien that’s really into infinity and I’m going to call him Ziltoid!’ So I had this little sock puppet. My other friend had Bung Sock, and another had Plugger, because he had ear plugs for eyes and Blindo was another because he didn’t have any eyes. Then we recorded a song with our sock puppets and…it was stupid! It took an hour, we were drunk and having fun. Then afterwards I was like ‘I could take Ziltoid to another level.’ So that was really how it started – a bunch of friends just making puppets.”

MTUK: Ziltoid reminds me of Mars Attacks, Flesh Gordon and Futurama. It’s very well done.

DT: “My proclivities of things I like to think about, I’m definitely interested in chaos and infinity. Whatever I do that’s always going to work it’s way in there, but I just wanted to temper that with something a little more entertaining."

MTUK (on SYL): Being told to do another album and having a contract…you’ve had enough of it.

DT: “Yeah and the thing with the Strapping thing is that, it might sound cheesy but whatever I say I’m going to do I’m going to do. I told them I’d do five records – I did five records. At the end of it they offered us this big deal, we’ll resign you, we’ve got all these big bands that’ll take you out on the road now. I just said ‘I’m done, I told you, I’m done.’ There’s a good chance that if it hadn’t gone to the level that it has then we might be doing it still.”

MTUK: What are you going to say, three or four years down the line, you’ve had all the black metal bands like EMPEROR and IMMORTAL who’ve split up and then all of a sudden they get offers and they reform and headline huge festivals. What’s going to be your opinion when you’re asked to do that?

DT: “Well I really hope that I’ll be able to say no. It’s like…”

MTUK: It’s a difficult thing to give an answer to.

DT: “It’s only difficult because if my kids are starving… you know? But there’s a good chance with the production and doing music elsewhere that that isn’t going to be the case. I honestly feel that if you can make a living…success is completely…you’re always going to chase it right? If you have success it’s never going to be as big as what could happen next. You’re constantly chasing this imaginary thing and at the end of it, I go back to the METALLICA example again…you look at Some Kind Of Monster and those guys are fucked. Ah dudes, they look terrified, they don’t look like happy people. You’ve got Kirk Hammett, ‘I’m a cowboy now! I live out in the fields and I don’t want anybody to talk to me about Metallica.’”

MTUK: Are you going to be able to chill and cope with your family…

DT: “Oh yeah, definitely.”

MTUK: …keep out the limelight and not play live?

DT: “If I’m making enough money to survive then I don’t see why not. I think that there’s enough people and enough bands that it won’t be long before people are like ‘oh yeah I remember Devin, he used to play live and he put out some pretty good records’. Honestly, I’m thirty five and I’ve had so many experiences. There’s not a lot in the industry that I wanted to do that I didn’t. I’ve nothing really to prove to myself and that last round of Strapping was too much, it ruined it for me.”

Go to this location to check out the complete interview.