Good show. Good tracks. Two Acid King songs to start, new stuff from Nebula, Sasquatch, Obiat, Torpedo Torpedo, Les Nadie — with whose debut album I am enthralled; review next week — Chat Pile, Brujas del Sol, Cities of Mars, Freedom Hawk (also reviewing next week). Classics from YOB, The Devin Townsend Band, Yawning Man, Kyuss, Sleep. New classic, anyhow, from the latter and a live cut from Yawning Man that’s gorgeously immersive to end out before the bonus track Freedom Hawk closes. I don’t know how much sense it makes on paper, but it flows well.

I don’t really have a theme here other than “make a good show.” I wanted to mix it up with stuff people might know and not, hopefully keep listeners hooked. Even 89 episodes of The Obelisk Show, I still a little bit live in fear that at some point Gimme Metal is going to be like, “You’re weird, you play weird shit, you never turn your playlists in on time and you suck at this,” and give me the axe. It’s happened to me on radio before (ask me about that some time; glorious story), but hasn’t happened yet here. Still, a nod to accessibility isn’t the worst idea once every 90 shows or so.

Thanks if you listen and thanks for reading.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 07.22.22 (VT = voice track)

Acid King	Red River	Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere
Acid King	2 Wheel Nation	III
The Devin Townsend Band	Sunday Afternoon	Accelerated Evolution
YOB	Quantum Mystic	The Unreal Never Lived
VT
Cities of Mars	Towering Graves (Osmos)	Cities of Mars
Torpedo Torpedo	Black Horizon	The Kuiper Belt Mantras
Les Nadie	Del Pombero	Les Nadie
Sasquatch	Save the Day, Ruin the Night	Fever Fantasy
Sleep	Giza Butler	The Sciences
Kyuss	Whitewater	Sky Valley
Nebula	Highwired	Transmission From Mothership Earth
Chat Pile	Slaughterhouse	God’s Country
Obiat	Sea Burial	Indian Ocean
Brujas del Sol	To Die on Planet Earth	Deculter
VT
Yawning Man	Blowhole Sunrise/Space Finger	Live at Giant Rock
Freedom Hawk	Age of the Idiot	Take What You Can

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Aug. 5 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gmme Metal website

The Obelisk on Facebook

Canadian auteur Devin Townsend released Accelerated Evolution, the first of only two albums from the short-lived era of The Devin Townsend Band, in March 2003, one month after his more extreme metal outfit, the riotous Strapping Young Lad, issued their own SYL. Divided in purpose like light and dark — something that Townsend may or may not explore on his upcoming companion album releases Lightwork (Oct. 28 release date) and Nightwork; dude puts out more music than even his own label can keep up with, let alone the rest of humanity — Accelerated Evolution prioritized melody and songcraft, and put to accessible use the wash of prog-leaning metal that typified earlier solo efforts like 1997’s Ocean Machine: Biomech, 1998’s Infinity and the somewhat meaner 2000 outing, Physicist. Despite the change in band situation — as in, he put together a band that wasn’t Strapping Young Lad — the lushness that unifies Accelerated Evolution‘s “Storm,” “Random Analysis,” “Deadhead,” “Away” and “Sunday Afternoon” (and while we’re at it also the rest) wasn’t unprecedented, continuing a thread from 2001’s Terria that still plays heavily into his work today, as demonstrated on 2019’s let’s-just-go-orchestral-and-see-what-happens Empath.

So, different from Strapping Young Lad and purposefully so, but that was consistent with Townsend‘s prior solo output. And the two outfits, through SYL‘s brilliant 2005 album, Alien, and The Devin Townsend Band‘s one-upping-by-being-even-more-brilliant Synchestra (discussed here), would eventually enter conversation, collide, and create something new in The Devin Townsend Project after SYL‘s 2006 swansong, The New Black, but for being in its particular spot in Devin Townsend‘s ongoing creative progression, for its clarity of intention to engage its audience with songcraft, for pulling away from some of the experiments in sound collage, etc., of his earlier solo records, and for the band, Accelerated Evolution could only be called prog, but its identity within that was and remains almost impossibly rich. It is the product of about three different creative transitions happening at the same time for its maker, and yet it is cohesive, massive, encompassing and vital.

Townsend‘s work has been sprinkled with enough hyperbole for the last 20-plus years that I don’t necessarily feel compelled to add to it, but he’s someone who has well earned the loyalty of his fans even as he’s delved into various indulgences and experiments — anyone remember Devlab? The Hummer? — and though I’ve come and gone following along his sometimes-merry-sometimes-tearjerking-sometimes-fun-sometimes-just-weird adventures in sound, Accelerated Evolution has remained a special point in the timeline. Not really appropriate to say “lightning in a bottle,” since Townsend could probably make 100 records like this if he wanted to, just build them up one layer of guitar at a time until he gets to an immersive shove like “Suicide” here or the made-to-move “Traveller” and concluding hookmeister “Slow Me Down,” but still. A creative moment that is fortunately preserved through the clear vision of his own production. It is beautiful where Strapping Young Lad often strove to be ugly, and Townsend‘s vocal ability to convey emotion in “Sunday Afternoon” manages to not at all contradict the rush of scream-laced opener “Depth Charge,” but instead to feed into the whole-album affect that holds firm throughout the 54-minute run.

What the fuck am I talking about? I love this record, is what I’m trying to say. Yeah, it’s probably as close as Devin Townsend has ever come to writing a pop version of his take on heavy prog metal, but I’d have a hard time directing you to an album that does a better job of speaking to its audience while serving its own creative ends. The languid roll of “Deadhead” after the shove of “Random Analysis” — which, yes, has the lines, “Still you’re saying ‘fa-ot is as fa-ot does with every little fa-ot thing a fa-ot do’/I’m not insane, I’m not insane, I’m just smarter than you”; a word choice that one assumes Townsend, who turned 50 in May, probably regrets even using in a quoted context — the sheer brazenness of making “Suicide” the centerpiece, and the fluidity with which Accelerated Evolution crosses lines between metal and not-metal in a song like “Traveller” working its way up to its screams, or how “Random Analysis” and “Deadhead” sets up the pattern for “Traveller” and the spacious guitar musing “Away” is nothing short of genius, and if you search through this site for how many times I’ve thrown that word around, you’ll see it’s few compared to how much music has been discussed in the last 13-plus years. This album is simply craft at another level.

I don’t want to sit here and try to mansplain Devin Townsend to you, what he’s accomplished in his career, whether it’s with Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend Band, Devin Townsend Project, Ziltoid, getting his start as a teenager with Steve Vai, all of that stuff. I just love these songs, and I’ve been a fan long enough that I don’t feel the need to feign impartiality and not say so. If you’ve never been interested in Townsend‘s output, or perhaps been put off by the eternal question of where to start or how to approach a catalog that encompasses multiple incarnations of the guy himself — I remember when The Devin Townsend Project started, thinking it lacked the moniker charm of The Devin Townsend Band, even if it had the added layer of humor thinking of himself as the project in question — it’s okay. I have come and gone over the years too, but sometimes you get on a kick and I’ve been rediscovering my affection for his work. This one stood out to me. If you’ve never listened to him before or given it a real shot, maybe Accelerated Evolution can be an entry point.

If nothing else, every time I put on “Sunday Afternoon,” I feel like my day gets a little bit better. Maybe you can too.

And like I mentioned above, Townsend‘s discography is ever-growing. The last couple years have been full of quarantine concerts, special editions — last December he released two records, The Puzzle and Snuggles, that I didn’t even know about until I started writing this — so there’s a universe to dig into. But especially if you’re new, start with this, keep it casual, and see where you end up.

As always, and maybe a little more than usual, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

“Good morning daddy,” from upstairs. 5:27AM wakeup.

That’s The Pecan, who’s been waking up exceedingly early these last few weeks. Now sitting next to me, I wonder if he reads these words yet. Probably. My dude is scary intelligent and somewhat covert about skills development until all of a sudden he starts reading street signs and shit.

We had a rough week.

It culminated yesterday in a phone call at 9:24AM telling us to pick him up from camp, that he was no longer welcome. He’d been hitting, biting, kicking, having a hard time generally, and still doesn’t use the toilet, which was a requirement. Camp had a policy no money back. We got our money back. I’m rather proud of the email The Patient Mrs. and I wrote to the owner of the camp, and of the fact that I told the director of The Pecan’s section off directly and called his camp inadequate to my son’s needs, which apparently it was.

That was a shitty situation pretty much from day one, but I’d been hoping it would smooth out rather than take the turn it took, not the least because that was our plan for the summer. He’d be at camp. The writing days were easy, he was swimming every day, it seemed pretty perfect. Alas. Daddy Daycamp it is.

This invariably makes next week’s continuation of the Quarterly Review more complicated. I also have a Creem column due — they pay me! it’s been long enough that that’s a novelty — and PostWax liner notes revisions for Acid King. Complicated. See also “5:27AM wakeup” above. Used to be my man slept reliably until after six.

So camp’s out. We’re exploring other options, like having someone come and just hang out with him for a couple hours a day, go for walks and bike rides, maybe take him to the kiddie pool up the hill at the town pool if we decide to join or just make sure he doesn’t lack-of-impulse-control his way into playing in traffic while dancing in and drinking hose water, etc. I like that notion because it’s one-on-one, and that’s how he’s best, and it’s centered around the home, where I can still be available if needed for backup while I’m otherwise working on this site, but finding the right person is probably a longer-term project than this weekend. I worry about him being lonely. Even his cousins, who he loves, are older, and every time he’s in a setting with another kid there’s an issue. We’ve read 1-2-3 Magic and a host of others. If there was a magic bullet answer for this kid, I feel like we would at least have had a hint of it. As of now, the only way he listens to me, ever, is if I threaten to take some preferred activity or item, toy, etc., away. I don’t like being that person. I don’t like myself as that person.

Collectively, we feel awful. Him, her, me. The whole family. My mother came to the house yesterday afternoon, kind of just for moral support, and fell outside on our patio. Nothing broken, thankfully, but it was another kick that, the giant shit The Pecan took after bedtime — “Daddy… I have to poop…” from the top of the stairs as I was about to start watching the new Star Trek — was a fitting end to a day. Shit up the kid’s back, in his shirt. We’re talking about “diapers going away” starting tomorrow. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to pull the trigger on that and invite that kind of existential pain. Parenthood as a relative measurement of agonies.

He’s up and running and I need to get him breakfast (6:09AM, if you’re wondering), so I’m gonna punch out. Great and safe weekend. Hydrate, watch your head. No non-consensual biting. Gimme show next week.

FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

I won’t attempt to even feign impartiality here: I love this album. By now, the Devin Townsend discography is — for the uninitiated — an impenetrable hodgepodge of various releases from different incarnations of the man himself and bands built around him, from Strapping Young Lad to The Devin Townsend Band to The Devin Townsend Project to… wait for it… Devin Townsend, and that’s before you get into whether Ocean Machine: Biomech was supposed to be a record by a band called Ocean Machine, or an offshoot project like Casualties of Cool or that thing he did with Jason Newsted that time, or that thing he did with Scott Reeder that time, or his book, or Ziltoid the Omniscient, and so on and so forth.

Synchestra was released in 2006 and is a crossroads album. It ties together with Strapping Young Lad‘s penultimate, likewise brilliant 2005 LP, Alien, in theme and musical callbacks, a cut like “Babysong” coming in answer to “Love?” from the SYL release, and pre-hidden-track Synchestra closer “Notes From Africa” actually reworking a part of that  song into its own multifaceted progression. This was Townsend, an artist of rare expressive and compositional capability whose career began at 19 with Steve Vai, working through the idea of procreation and coming up with a lush and genius prog metal modus in the process. “Triumph” talks about “Hooray for Dr. Young” and “Hooray the time has come to vanish once again,” and Synchestra was the final album from The Devin Townsend Band before Townsend went to ground and did the Hummer drone record and broke out the puppet for Ziltoid, then came back with The Devin Townsend Project for Ki and a succession of albums the last of which was 2016’s Transcendence — so you see where the idea of ‘crossroads’ comes from. It’s also fair to consider Synchestra a signal of intent in bringing Strapping Young Lad to a close, as that band’s last album, The New Black, was also released in 2006 but cobbled together from various odds and ends in, if I remember right, contractual obligation to produce one more record.

And if you’re still reading and your eyes haven’t glazed over, well, thanks. You also see where ‘impenetrable’ comes from. It’s a sometimes manic level of creativity.

Whatever came before or would follow after, Synchestra was a special moment put to tape. At 65 minutes, it was the realization of the vision of prog Townsend had been developing all along on records like Infinity (1998), Physicist (2000), the also-essential Terria (2001) and the first Devin Townsend Band LP, Accelerated Evolution, in 2003. Its songs run a gamut from the folkish and beautiful intro “Let it Roll” to the goofy metal parody “Vampira” — to say nothing of its lead-in “Vampolka” — kind of making fun of goth and Strapping Young Lad at the same time, while also being ridiculously catchy and over the top, to masterpieces like the building “Triumph” early on, and “Gaia,” the largely instrumental “A Simple Lullaby” and the uberwerk that is “Pixillate,” arriving as it does as part of a movement in the second half of the album that begins with the suitably bright ambient piece “Mental Tan” and unfolds across the remaining tracks plus the bonus let’s-just-have-a-good-time classic-style rocker “Sunshine and Happiness” with the real culmination in the prior “Notes From Africa.”

That second movement, of course, follows on from the first, which ties together more as individual songs than one whole piece but flows nonetheless, with “Let it Roll” moving into the chaotic “Hypergeek” and “Triumph” and “Babysong” feeding into “Vampolka” and “Vampira,” making for an initial 22 minutes that might leave one spinning but ultimately proves just crazy enough to work, in no small part because of Townsend‘s mastery as a songwriter, performer and producer. He’s not alone here — Steve Vai guests on guitar in “Triumph,” Ryan Van Poederooyen plays drums, Mike Young adds bass and tuba, Dave Young plays keys of various sorts, and there are guest vocals throughout — but there is a personal feel nonetheless in part because of the conversational, fourth-wall-breaking framing of the lyrics, and in part because the style and substance, lush as they are and cleanly, clearly produced in a way that has become a Townsend hallmark, are so much his own. As the tracklisting shifts into “Mental Tan,” “Gaia,” “Pixillate” and its stomping, soulful follow-up “Judgement,” there’s a grandeur that justifies the orchestral reference in the record’s title, the crowd sounds of the mostly-instrumental “A Simply Lullaby” feeding into the denouement of “Sunset” and the sense of arrival in “Notes From Africa,” as structure becomes no less of a plaything than melody when it comes to the broader vision of Synchestra as a whole.

And I won’t take away from that, because the album is visionary. It’s of a scope that turns most metal into dust and shows progressive rock/metal for the posturing crank it is. But I need to talk about “Pixillate” for a second because it’s just too gorgeous to go unremarked. The way the first minute builds up with that chug and the far back vocals, the voice of Gaia up front with Townsend answering back, like dialogue, the verse and chorus together, all the while this underlying motion plays out carrying the listener across an eight-minute span that’s an album’s worth of journey — it’s just incredible. It deserves every bit of volume you can give it, and if you’re at all in a position to close your eyes, tilt your head back and let it wash over you, do. Your life will be richer for it. This record is 15 years old this year and “Pixillate” still raises the laughably tiny amount hair on my arms every time. Every time.

And 15 years later, I still find something new to hear on the record. That’s cliché as fuck, but it’s true too. Even if it wasn’t though, like I said at the outset, it comes down to the basic fact that I love this album. I have associations with it positive and negative, but that’s life isn’t it? And Synchestra is an album to live with. If anyone — one person — who reads this who hasn’t heard it hears it, it’s worth it. A word to the wise though, the YouTube playlist above has volume changes that are a pain in the ass. It was the best stream I could find, but you may want to search it out otherwise.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Maybe a little more than usual, I hope you enjoy this one. Thanks for reading.

—

So I guess the big news this week was Bongzilla signing to Heavy Psych Sounds. Oh, and America’s new president. There was that too. Whatever. Looking forward to that Bongzilla LP, curious if HPS will pick up Church of Misery as well after releasing Sonic Flower stuff. That’d be something.

The real news was The Pecan was back in school this week. In-person. Made a big quality-of-life difference around here, I think most of all for him. He needs that out-of-the-house experience that has been so lagging for last year. Hey, a year. It’s been a year. Covid-era, indeed.

But things are things. I’m glad politics are bland again. I hope they continue to be so and I hope Democrats realize unity is a joke, blow away the filibuster and actually do something in the next two years before they lose their majority in congress and the slide toward right wing fascism picks up where it left off. That’s my hot take. Feel the burn.

I need to have a tooth removed. Number 30, if you’re interested. Apparently I have a massive infection in my jawline. Oops. I consult with a surgeon on Monday. Stay tuned.

Speaking of tuned — masterful segue! — there’s a new The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal today at 5pm. I don’t talk, so there’s nothing to interrupt the flow except Gimme promos, which give it that real-radio feel. At least I don’t have to listen to myself speak.

You should really listen to the Devin Townsend record.

Great and safe weekend. Hydrate, mask up, thanks for reading.

FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch