Preamble

Devin Townsend, a man once known for his brutal metal, has broken free of his ways and started a band called the Devin Townsend Project. He released Ki: an ambient rock album mixed with some metal, Addicted: a poppy metal album, and now he’s back with two more, Ghost: a completely ambient album, and Deconstruction: a straight out metal album returning to his roots. Even though the two albums were released together, I am reviewing them separately because they are just too different to combine into a single review.

Review

I originally stated that Deconstruction was a generic metal album, but that was before I had a chance to really listen to it, and I’ve come to realize how wrong I really was. Deconstruction in a lot of ways is Ki mixed with Ziltoid The Omniscient, meaning that it’s calm, heavy, comical, and just outright strange. The album is sprinkled with many operatic elements and progressive metal riffs that it might sound like you’re listening to a Symphony X album.

The album features many guest vocalists and other instrumentalists like Floor Jansen, Paul Masvidal, Greg Puciato, Fredrik Thordendal, and many others. However, the problem is that I really don’t know most of these guests, but they all do a great job at their respective roles. Some of them really shine, such as Ihsahn on Juular or Floor Jansen on Pandemic.

Deconstruction feels like a throwback to older songs, whether it be something as recent as Addicted, or even some direct sampling from the 1998 Infinity album. The album really does feel like a Ziltoid 2 though, but that’s that probably due to all the spoken word sections.

If there’s one thing I haven’t yet complemented the album for, it’s the awesome guitar work on it. The riffs and the solos are some of the best I’ve heard on any Devin Townsend project.

The album supposedly tells a story about a man who’s searching for the meaning of life and finds a cheeseburger or something. It’s really hard to follow, even when reading along with the lyrics.

You might have noticed that I mentioned a lot of elements, and that seems to be the problem with this album. It feels like everything is just thrown together. The songs seem spastic and really inconsistent, especially during the long songs like Planet of the Apes or The Mighty Masturbator. I did like some parts, like the techno part of The Mighty Masturbator, but some parts of other songs just do not fit or they drag on for way too long.

Some of my favourite songs are Juular which sounds like a metalized polka song with someone playing a moonshine bottle. Poltergeist, which is one of the heaviest tracks on the album and feels like an actual song. Then there’s Stand which starts off calm but then goes into some heavy screaming, the song is very reminiscent of Ki, which is probably why I enjoy it so much.

The Bottom Line

Even though the album is really good at points, it feels really inconsistent and random. Many times the song I was listening to changed so much that I had to double check that I was still listening to the same song. It seems that Devin Townsend threw everything at the wall and see what would stick. Fortunately the stuff that did stick ended up being amazing.