Devin Townsend - Ziltoid the Omniscient. ....Sci-fi Metal? inDEED!

I, like many others, was naturally disappointed when I heard of Devin Townsend's decision to disband Strapping Young Lad and the Devin Townsend Band and retreat to the backwoods of Canada, away from touring and public life to become a hermit (albeit a hermit who constantly ships out amazing new music). However, his new release "Ziltoid the Omniscient" definitely makes up for any disappointment I felt before, being in my opinion, his best release since the Devin Townsend Band's "Accelerated Evolution". In fact, this album takes quite a lot of influence from the DTB as well as Strapping, creating a truly diverse album with everything from clean, rubato guitars with soaring vocal harmonies ("Solar Winds"), to brutal, downtuned guitars, chugging in true Strapping style ("Ziltoidia Attaxx!"), of course with Devin's innate humor thrown in as well. This album takes all of Devin Townsend's musical styles and packs them together to form this epic metal opus. A good way to describe how Dev approached this album was to take the sheer brutality, intensity, and anger of Strapping Young Lad and channel it into creating eccentric, epic sci fi chops, complete with the melodic style of DTB.

Being a huge Stargate SG-1 and sci-fi nerd in general, my prayers for a truly epic Sci-fi metal record have been answered! Although a constant thread of trademarked Devin Townsend comedy is maintained throughout (i mean, look at the title!), this album is filled with coffee swilling, human slaying, planet smashing, all knowing alien ownage. The plot centers around the 4th dimensional alien "Ziltoid the Omniscient" and his conquest of Earth and it's finest black coffee. which he needs to bend time (established in "ZTO", and "Ziltoidia Attaxx!"). "Captain Spectacular" leads the humans in the fight against Ziltoid. This album is so metal that Ziltoid could use it as fuel to bend time, no problem, screw the perfect coffee beans.

The highlight of this album for me is without a doubt "Solar Winds", the 9 and a half minute long fourth track of Devin's sci-fi opus. At the start, an entertaining voice over from Devin reveals Captain Spectacular's ingenious plan to "expose Ziltoid for what he really is.......a NERD!" We are then brought onto the deck of Spectacular's ship, as the Captain "introspectively gazes out of his starship window, on the way to the 4th dimensional Nebuloan 9." What follows is a surprisingly solemn, melodic intro, replete with chiming, atmospheric guitars, godly sounding vocal harmonies, and very cool lyrics. Devin really flaunts his talent as a vocalist on this track, especially when the song starts to get heavy, his vocals taking the lead melodic role over the slightly dissonant guitar line, contrasting with it very well. This contrast is the essence of this album, taking the best parts of Strapping and DTB and fusing them together to create something totally new.

The one disappointment of this record is its mediocre ending, which reveals that the entire story was merely a daydream of some slacker working at a coffee shop. Although this has some funny ties to the plot of the album, it is so abrupt that it gives off the impression that Dev needed to end it quickly. I was looking forward to a grand finale to tie up the story, and the ending was a bit of a letdown. However, this only slightly taints the sheer awesomeness of this album (nothing is perfect, after all), and if he maintains his prolific creativity, I think that we can expect great things from Devin Townsend in the future.

9.5/10

-Jack Deming