[Reaper16]

18. Devin Townsend – Sky Blue (Z2 disc 1)


Devin Townsend, much to the chagrin of his longtime Strapping Young Lad fans, has been experimenting in recent years with trying to find a sort of Pop Metal sound. 2009’s Addicted saw Devin try to find a pop sensibility in industrial rock, which led to 2012’s Epicloud, a release of metalish songs with MONSTER hooks. This album, Sky Blue, is the best distillation of Devin’s pop metal yet. What helps is the large amount of female vocals; this album has as much singing from Anneke van Giersbergen (maybe my favorite female singer on Earth) as it does Devin. The guitar leads sound The Scorpions as filtered through an episode of Doctor Who. The trademark Devin wall of sound is like dense dark matter/spaceship/you see where I’m going with this. Sometimes this album is like what British pop-rock would have evolved into out of the 80’s if hip-hop never happened (especially on “Silent Militia” which sounds like a Ministry song with a chorus lifted from “You Spin Me Round”), but other songs are inspired directly by today’s pop music; “Sky Blue” lifts its chorus from Usher’s “DJ Got Us Fallin in Love” (yes, Devin invented Usher Metal on this album). I don’t think he’s perfected the ideal mix of metal/hard rock feel with pop structure yet. But this is pretty close.