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Wednesday 11 December 2019

A View From The Back Of The Room: Devin Townsend (Live Review By Rich Oliver)

Devin Townsend, Great Hall, Cardiff

It will be no secret to people who read this blog that I am an enormous fan of Devin Townsend. His latest album Empath received a full 10/10 score from me and in my opinion he has rarely put a foot wrong in his long and extremely varied career so when it was confirmed that Devin would be playing in my home city for the very first time there was no doubt that I was going to be there with bells on.

Unfortunately due to some confusion to the start time with conflicting times shown on the tickets and the event page on social media I missed the vast majority of the support act Haken walking into the venue for the last half of their final song so this review will only be covering Devin’s set.

Devin had previously announced that the tour for Empath would comprise of different stages starting with the total deconstruction of his music and rebuilding it step by step throughout the various stages of the tour. Stage 1 was the acoustic tour back in April which was Devin’s music in its most raw and stripped down form and this show was part of Stage 2 which is taking Devin’s music and performing it in a freer almost improvisational style with the usual backing tracks removed and the vast majority of the music performed live by Devin and his supporting musicians. For these shows Devin gathered together a bunch of seasoned musicians from various backgrounds. A few of these had played on Empath including bassist Nathan Navarro, drummer Morgan Ågren (who also played on the Casualties Of Cool album), multi instrumentalist Mike Keneally and singer/guitarist Ché Aimee Dorval (who also collaborated on Casualties Of Cool as well as the Ki album). You also had Haken keyboard player Diego Tejeida pulling double duty, guitarist Markus Reuter (known for his King Crimson related work) as well as a trio of choral backing singers.

Now onto the actual performance itself. This was a bit of a different Devin show. The set drew heavily from Empath and was quite light on the crowd pleasers instead drawing on material which matched the skills of the musicians he had joining him. There was also plenty of jamming and doodling between everyone showing that they had magnificent musical chemistry. It was a quite self indulgent set and I don’t think a chunk of the audience quite got what they were seeing but the self indulgent nature of the set was offset by the usual goofing around that is synonymous with a Devin Townsend show from Diego’s on stage cocktail bar to jazz hands to the entire audience screaming KITTENS in a death metal growl Devin ensured that entertainment was the key of the evening and as stated at the start of the show “You shall have fucking fun!”.

Songs wise it was a good mix with plenty of picks from Empath such as Borderlands, Evermore, Sprite and Genesis. A good chunk of songs were played from Ki many of which I had never seen performed before including Coast, Gato, Heaven Send and Ain’t Never Gonna Win. For the older fans we also had War, Lucky Animals and a jaw dropping performance of the magnificent Deadhead which was a clear highlight for me and pretty much everyone else in the room. Other highlights for me were the absolute silliness of Why? which saw both Devin and Ché wearing tutus and a quite frankly beautiful version of Spirits Will Collide which saw Ché and the backing singers take the lead on the vocals to absolutely stunning effect. After a routine mocking of the ritual of encores at rock and metal shows the band returned to stage and performed the last song anyone was expecting (unless you knew it was coming of course) which was a cover of The Trammp’s disco classic Disco Inferno. Most people got into the spirit and danced along apart from the staunch metalheads who stood there arms folded looking decidedly unimpressed. Another curveball was thrown as then Mike, Morgan and Markus started jamming on the Frank Zappa song The Black Page #1 which added to the bewilderment of some of the audience. Things were brought back to a semblance of normality (as much as you can expect at a Devin show) with a finale of the classic Kingdom.

I thoroughly enjoyed this show and whilst not the best Devin Townsend show I have seen it was still hugely entertaining and enjoyably different. I’ve heard a few mixed opinions from people about the show with others fully enjoying like myself and some others not enjoying it at all. I think a good chunk of the audience were expecting a more traditional Devin Townsend show (if there is such a thing) so were a bit put off by the more improvisational and experimental nature of the music performed. In a set of two hours there were a ridiculous amount of musical tangents from calypso to funk to disco to avant-garde to fusion as well as the usual progressive rock and metal. For those wanting a more standard Devin show I recommend going to see a show in Stage 3 of the tour which will be more metal based and will also see Devin revisiting the Strapping Young Lad material which is gonna be a sight to behold. All in all I would give this show an 8/10.

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