Strapping Young Lad founder Devin Townsend has issued the following update:

"Blood Music has some real nice limited edition SYL vinyl re-issues up for Alien and City, ready to pre-order now and ready to ship around December. Both records are available in standard black and a blue edition."

Release dates will be on or around December 14th. Go to this location for details.

Machine Music recently caught up with Towsend. In the excerpt below, he discusses the now defunct Strapping Young Lad, the band that established Townsend as a force to be reckoned with for many people.

On SYL's City album: "I think the thing about City, and about the whole Strapping Young Lad thing, is that was a particular style of music that snuck up on me. It was not something that I was fluid in prior to that, I had to kind of study that back in the early 90s, because it was, of the choices that I had presented to me in order to continue doing music after [working with Steve] Vai. The more melodic Ocean Machine side wasn't getting attention from any label. But the heavier side, that I just sort of haphazardly made demoes for, did."

"So, with the first Strapping record I was kind of trying it on for size and experimenting with those sorts of extremes. But with City, and I think that a lot of what you express there defines Strapping in general, that there's a sense of irony to it, where you are self-aware of what it is to the point of almost humor. It doesn't necessarily, it doesn't negate the quality of it necessarily, but it just makes it, I don’t know if insincere is the right word, but certainly detached."

"You see, Strapping Young Lad was meant to be a reflection of the things that I was afraid of. Because, as I mentioned earlier, I am highly neurotic and highly insecure about a lot of things. But also the only way I've felt I've been able to move, maybe because my emotional intelligence is so low, is to actualize these things and then observe them after the fact. So, you know, I think with Strapping there's an element of that detachment that serves it. But ultimately, was I ever that? I guess the answer is yes, absolutely, it's just that, I mean, I don't find any of it particularly easy, but I find most of it quite humorous."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Photo by Omer Cordell (Trailight)