Consequence Of Sound caught up with Devin Townsend to discuss his new album, Empath. Following is an excerpt from the interview.

On the "Genesis" single / video

Townsend: "There’s a psychological term — which I’m afraid I don’t know off-hand what the name of it is — that includes consciously allowing all the thoughts that you have, whether they’re positive, negative, destructive, chaotic, whatever, to present themselves without you defining yourself by any of them. It’s basically a process of observing them, to allow yourself to participate with not only where you are, but also, a certain amount of compassion for yourself — as opposed to just constant judgment. And I think 'Genesis' is almost like a mission statement for the album, where the idea is to no longer fear your own emotions, yet in order to do that, it requires participating in things that perhaps for a long time you may have felt uncomfortable with about yourself.

I think for me, in the past, I viewed the heavier things that I had done or certain frames of mind that I would get into — negative or what have you — as being aberrations mentally, as opposed to just things that need to be dealt with. So, 'Genesis' is almost like saying, 'OK, let’s cut the shit and start to deal with this.' And I think the video is chaotic because what I was hopefully trying to represent is as opposed to just hearing the structure and thinking, 'OK, this is purposely and provocatively chaotic,' having a visual component allows the audience to see how one thing leads to the next. And my hope is that the representation of that leads people to understand what I’m trying to do is just be creatively free — as opposed to putting any parameters on it this time."

Read the complete interview here.

Devin Townsend's new album, Empath, is out now via InsideOut Records. Watch a fourth track-by-track video below.

On this album Devin has decided to see what would happen if all the styles that make up his current interests were finally represented in one place. To finally shake the fear of expectation and just do what it is he was meant to do creatively; Empath, true to the name, is about allowing the audience a feeling for a variety of musical emotions. The musical dynamics represented on this single album are broad, challenging, and immense. To approach this sort of work with a long history of what makes heavy music “heavy,” allows this to be done with a type of power rarely heard. This is a statement about not only pursuing creative freedom in a conservative scene, but also trying to show that heavy music is truly a valid musical tool.

Empath is released on Limited 2 CD Digipak (including an entire disc of bonus material), Standard CD Jewelcase, Gatefold 180G 2LP Vinyl + CD + LP-booklet & as digital album. Order here.

Tracklisting:

"Castaway"
"Genesis"
"Spirits Will Collide"
"Evermore"
"Sprite"
"Hear Me"
"Why"
"Borderlands"
"Requiem"
"Singularity Part 1 - Adrift"
"Singularity Part 2 - I Am I"
"Singularity Part 3 - There Be Monsters"
"Singularity Part 4 - Curious Gods"
"Singularity Part 5 - Silicon Scientists"
"Singularity Part 6 - Here Comes The Sun"

Track-By-Track, Part 1:

Track-By-Track, Part 2:

Track-By-Track, Part 3:

Track-By-Track, Part 4:

"Spirits Will Collide" video:

“Evermore” video: