Born in Canada, Devin Townsend found fame at 21, fronting Steve Vai’s band in 1993, before playing with The Wildhearts and pursuing numerous self-driven projects. Now in his mid-fifties, Townsend is currently touring Europe to promote his orchestral-metal epic The Moth.
How are you, Devin?
I’m okay now, thanks, but a couple of years ago my life went sideways for a while. These days I live off-grid in a cabin that’s about three hundred square feet and I garden for a lady whose property I live on. That’s how I pay the rent, and I love it. I’m fortunate to have a studio, and whenever I have a musical idea that’s worth pursuing, I can. But this album, The Moth, almost became the soundtrack to a mental breakdown.
The Moth is orchestral metal. It’s still mind-bogglingly heavy, but in a different way.
Yeah. The emotional components are the foundation of anything. The process of writing and then going through the articulation is like changing its state; in its formative state it’s like a gas, and then when you record it’s like a liquid. Once finished, you’ve got a solid. You’re trying to distil a period of time into something that maybe your audience doesn’t have a vocabulary for.
The idea for The Moth had been on the backburner of your mind for a decade, but it was a chance meeting with the head of the North Netherlands’ Orchestra And Choir that made it possible.
Marcel [Mandos] presented me the idea of new versions of music that had already been done, but I wanted to make new material. They only had a small window for the choirs and orchestra, and the scores were due on a certain date. And thus began the whirlwind.
It sounds complicated.
Usually, making a record is linear. With this one, such and such had to happen before so and so, before another person became involved. The logistics were far from simple.
I had gone through a separation after forty years, and my son had moved out, so I was also dealing with empty nest syndrome. This was a shocking transition that happened concurrent to The Moth.
Several years ago I remember telling somebody that The Moth was going to be about penis and vaginas. But it wasn’t until these things coalesced that I realised: “Oh, it’s about my relationship.”
The concept is “a loose story following someone who realises that old patterns of behaviour are no longer serving them”. Was making The Moth therapeutic?
No. It provided closure. Which isn’t to say my relationship is now terminated; it has just changed. The Moth is less about therapy and more about catharsis.
It sounds like you are now in a much better place.
Dude, where I am now could not be any further away than where I was during The Moth and [its 2024 predecessor] PowerNerd.
Presenting The Moth live in its entirety would require sampling the orchestral parts and choir, which, of course, are fundamental elements of it all.
We are talking about doing one-off shows around the world using local orchestras and choirs. Right now I’m not driven to do it. I don’t have much of a desire to push it into people’s consciousness. [Laughs] I’m such a shit salesman, dude.
The Moth is out now. The UK leg of Devin Townsend’s European tour begins on October 1. For dates and ticket links, check the Devin Townsend website.
