Devin Townsend Project

After sixteen years in the music business—an arc that opened when he contributed to Steve Vai’s 1993 album Sex and Religion—Vancouver-born metal performer and producer Devin Townsend, long recognized for his eccentric and prolific output, disclosed plans for the Devin Townsend Project. Emerging from a short sabbatical following the 2007 rock opera Ziltoid the Omniscient, the newly shaven-headed and abstinent Townsend outlined a four-album cycle under that banner, motivated chiefly by a desire to work without chemical assistance. He further intended to rotate different musicians across each record in pursuit of sustained freshness. Issued in May 2009, Ki stood among the more understated entries in his catalog, especially beside the aggressive Strapping Young Lad recordings; it incorporated relaxed funk and ambient rock textures, evident on the tranquil “Ain’t Never Gonna Win,” and enlisted drummer Duris Maxwell, whose résumé already included stints with Motown act Bobby Taylor & Vancouvers in the 1960s and Jefferson Airplane in the 1970s.

Critics greeted the Project’s second album, Addicted, later that year as reassuringly heavy and ranked it among Townsend’s most admired works; it fused crushing guitars with techno rhythms while spotlighting the vocals of ex-Gathering frontwoman Anneke van Giersbergen. On a single June 2011 release date the third and fourth Devin Townsend Project albums appeared together. Deconstruction upheld Townsend’s customary intensity and gathered an array of guest vocalists, whereas Ghost offered its sonic counterpart through soft, Tangerine Dream-aping soundscapes. The following year saw an unanticipated fifth Devin Townsend Project release, Epicloud, which reunited Townsend with Giersbergen and restored her central role from Addicted; the album reached the Top Ten of the Finnish charts. That summer the live box set By a Thread: Live in London 2011 documented consecutive performances of Ki, Addicted, and Deconstruction at The University of London, with Ghost presented on the fourth evening at the Union Chapel in Islington. DTP then resumed work on material begun immediately after Epicloud. Featuring vocals by Ché Aimee Dorval (from Ki) and drumming by jazzman Morgan Ågren, Casualties of Cool was finished in October 2013 and issued the next May in multiple editions.

Townsend had long been accustomed to developing projects across extended periods, setting them aside whenever creative blocks or touring obligations intervened. Z2 originated in 2009 as a sequel to 2007’s Ziltoid the Omniscient, eventually accumulating more than seventy associated songs. The concept materialized, in reduced form, as the paired albums Sky Blue and Dark Matters, issued together in October 2014. The band first presented the work at the Royal Albert Hall the following spring, at which point the albums were also made available separately. Although an extended hiatus had been discussed after that concert, DTP returned to the studio that autumn to record a new album. In early spring 2016 Townsend unveiled the cover art for Transcendence to the metal press; the album followed in September.