Andrew Danso

It’s a prodigy, droves flocked in over two hundred people, went to cheer on the Devin Townsend Project, who are wrapped in the kind of zaniness, charisma and gimmick which Mark Zuckerberg could never get away with. This show wasn’t about the fifty nerds at the front, waving Ziltoid dolls in the air, this was a carefully plotted metal show, with less of the baldy middle-aged bloke behind “Ghost”, and more of the angry boy in front of “Deconstruction”.

A common theme spanning through, in particular, Irish folk gigs is the idea of playing something airy and ambient through the PA before the lights go up, to not only set a kind of laid back mood in the room, but to emphasise the effect of jiving when it eventually gets going. Townsend implores a similar psychology, except while the roadies are setting up, a ‘radio’ ‘Ziltoid 5.3’ gets going, playing stuff like Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” and Beyonce. Not only did it work in getting the crowd full of laughter in anticlimax, but it also served to misdirect them, so that when he eventually chugged into “ZTO”, it looked like their face had hit the wall.

It’s hard not to notice a lot of his older productions sounding enhanced live, and it’s a worthy cosmetic touch. Reproducing “Seventh Wave”, “Deep Peace” and “Bad Devil” they had much greater guile live, than their usual habitat on CD. Two tracks ripped from Deconstruction were played, “Stand” and “Juular” which served to pulverise the crowd, and the double encore finish got quite a few laughs in its irony – he twice told the audience to ‘shut up’ while playing through “Heaven Send” off “Ki”, which got this snotty nosed critic teetering, and completely on his side.

8/10 Powerplay #139