About ten years ago my wife went out and bought a double CD called Open Space: The Classic Chillout Album,
which was exactly as the title suggested. It contains about 40 songs
that all sound exactly the same, in supposedly calming nature which is
meant to be enjoyed in a relaxed, quiet atmosphere to help the listener
to 'chill out'. Quite honestly, it is up there with some of the worst
albums it has ever been my misfortune to have to listen to. It is
possibly even more vile than those champions of crap, Echobrain and Lulu.
The reason I bring this up is because when I first put on Ghost I thought I had inadvertently put on Open Space: The Classic Chillout Album by mistake.
Ghost
is an exercise by Devin Townsend to complete a four album stint which
apparently showcases the four parts of his personality or some such
crap. So do you describe this album as his soft and sensitive side, or
his boring as shit, crap, lobotomised side? How harsh in judgement can
you be? Quite clearly, this album is not to my taste in music, and
despite the fact that it is a part of a quadrilogy of set styles, should
I be bagging it? Well... yes, I can. Because if Iron Maiden came out
and did this album, I would be roasting them. If Metallica came out and
did this album, well, I guess we'd all shrug our shoulders and just
expect it.
There is no question that the quality of the playing
and production is top notch. That has never been in question in Devin's
work. But I can't swallow this bile. Obviously there are any number of
people who will enjoy this album, many of them who would have nothing to
do with Devin's other work. If you are into new age or ambient music,
this may in fact be your Abbey Road. But as a conclusion to his Project, it is even more disconcerting than what has come before it.
It was only at a friend's insistence that I
“must listen to his new albums” that I decided to revisit Devin Townsend
and his work. It has been some time since I had listened to Strapping
Young Lad's Alien album, which had both
intrigued and bored me at the same time. In short, his style of manic
mayhem does not sit in my sphere of music listening enjoyment. However,
having had the albums forced into my hands and told to report back with
“how much you loved them”, I decided to delve into its mystique.
As
with most of his stuff, this is really out there. It is the kind of
music that I can imagine some parents listening to for about thirty
seconds and then calling up for the priest to perform an exorcism. It
truly is a wall of sound, punctuated by periods of morose acoustic
musings. Some of these songs (“Juular” in particular, and half of “The
Mighty Masturbator”) almost sound like he’s trying to write a carnival
song - albeit an extreme type of carnival song. There’s a bit of
everything here, and while that will no doubt please his followers, it
really just confuses me.
I appreciate Devin’s undoubted talents, all the way back to his version of Judas Priest’s “Sinner” on A Tribute to Judas Priest: Legends of Metal tribute album. But his own music and style just doesn’t sit with me at all. Deconstruction
to me is a little like sitting in the dentist’s chair – the soft mood
music is the edginess before it all starts, and the frantic wave of
noise is the dentist’s drill as it hacks into your molars. I can
absolutely see why fans of Devin Townsend would love this, because it is
much like his other material. To be honest, I will at some stage have
to check out the first two albums in this four piece set just to satisfy
my curiosity, but I no longer need to dwell on this album, nor its
successor Ghost.
