[Reaper16]

18. Devin Townsend Project – Epicloud

Devin Townsend’s new album was his attempt at making a Def Leppard-style poppy hard rock album. This album is going for poppy hooks and feel-good moments, and it isn’t unlike the previously mentioned Weather Systems by Anathema in its ability to make me really happy. Epicloud is glossy in all of the right ways. The ethereal vocals of Anneke van Giersbergen, one of my favorite singers in the world, is featured on many of the albums track’s. But there’s still plenty of Devin’s thick riffs to ground this thing in hard rock territory. “Grace” is the total package of light, catchy moments in the midst of a hard skeleton, “Kingdom” is a beefed-up cover of an old Devin Townsend song, and the tracks “Hold On” and “Save Our Now” (a reimagining of a Pendulum song) have beautiful crescendos that make me smile like a giant idiot child man. Devin has been resisting an album like this for a long time, by which I mean an album that isn’t sonically unified. There’s industrial tracks here, there’s metal tracks here, there’s tracks that are purely ambient. But it all sounds like Devin Townsend, and this sounds like a perfect lesson for him to learn.