Following on from 2005’s Alien and with the Devin Townsend Band Synchestra album barely six months on the shelves, The New Black comes at the end of a prodigious period of productivity, even by the remarkable standards of bipolar polymath Townsend.
After the dense, intimidating and exhausting landscapes of Alien, The New Black, despite its title, offers a welcome chink of sunshine and levity into Strapping’s none-more intense world. Not to suggest that this is going to give The Beach Boys a run for their money in the jolliness stakes – the opening double whammy of Decimator and You Suck blast in on a Tasmanian Devil whirlwind of lightning-fingered fretwork and Gene Hoglan’s near-supernatural drumming, topped with an entertainingly potty mouthed litany of abuse. Lyrically it’s a manic celebration / affectionate mockery of life as a metal icon, simultaneously an encouragement and slap-down to the upstart likes of Trivium. Musically, evidence of Townsend’s mercurial imagination abounds – amid the otherwise stomping Antiproduct, there’s a sudden burst of synthesised horns and the song almost drops into a swing-band beat before returning to more doom thrash territory. Wrongside sounds like it has a demonic fiddler dancing his way to Hades all over the middle section, Almost Again has a soaring melodic edge more reminiscent of Townsend’s solo work while it’s back to normal for the closing title track, a heads-down no-nonsense chugga-metal behemoth.
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In career best terms, it still isn’t the masterwork that remains 1997’s City, but The New Black is a bruising metal beast to be sure and if, as Townsend has suggested in recent interviews, this marks a hiatus, then he’s bowing out of the limelight with the tinnitus ringing splendidly in our ears. Don’t leave it too long, Dev.
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