~INTERVIEWS~
Capturing raw noise and mixing it with complicated metallic riffage is what Strapping Young Lad do best. Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, the mastermind behind SYL is 24 year-old Devin Townsend, a multi-talented individual who has worked with Steve Vai, Front Line Assembly and Jason Newsted (on the infamous IR8 demo). But while he's had the chance to work with some interesting people, Devin decided it was time that he called the shots, wrote the material and played what he wanted to.
"Every couple of months there has been the opportunity to join an established band or something along that line, but I figured I spent the first five years of my career working at the behest of other people and my identity was based on the fact that I had ridden on other people's coat tails for so long," Devin stresses. "It got to a point where you don't want to play that game anymore . You don't want to be a musical whore your entire life. I wasn't enjoying the music I was playing enough to be committed to it. So, it was a matter of doing something where I called the shots."
In 1994, Devin decided he'd pursue what occupied his mind, and that was to create SYL. In 1995, the band signed to Century Media, and soon after their debut crept into stores capturing the minds of curious metal fans. However, what makes SYL unique, and as their latest release will show, is that they have taken metal to new and uncompromising heights. Reared steadily on a mixture of extreme metal and doused in bouts of white noise, this album is faster than Fear Factory's cybercore fury and more intense than Nine Inch Nails' industrial mayhem.
"When I was 18 or 19 years old, I made a demo and sent it to a bunch of record companies. I actually got a bunch of old underwear and taped the tape to the crotch, and wrote a note on the top of the underwear to the people I was sending it to. So whether it was the music or the sheer vulgarity of it that got me a deal, I don't know," says Devin. "I guess the person that was least offended by it was Cliff at Relativity Records. He phoned me up and said, 'what are you doing?' and I said, 'Nothing, just hanging'. He said, 'Well, we want to fly you to New York and sign you up and a guy called Steve Vai wants you to sing with him'. At that time I was making Tex Mex at a restaurant in Canada, so I said 'OK, I'm there!," Devin remembers. "I was like, 'I swear I'm never doing that bullshit job again'," he snorts, reflecting upon his greasy spoon days.
Lyrics mean a lot to Townsend, who adds that all of what he is singing about is personal. "A lot of what I sing is about the confusion I feel about life," he admits. Songs like All Hail The New Flesh show the intense arrangements and structures involved in SYL's unique song writing, while Spirituality sees Townsend aim towards bizarre musical confusion.
"While most people between the ages of 18 and 24 are learning about themselves, through sex, relationships or through a job, I was touring with Aerosmith. It was difficult because when I came out of it I no longer had that to fall back on, I had to be me. It was tough and I think that that is what this record is about," says Townsend. "The whole album is about what happens to me when I go out, have sex, as well as about alcohol and drugs. As long as it evokes an emotion in me, then I'll write about it. I'm not one for fiction."
By Jane Rocca, Loudmouth magazine 1997