Devin Townsend’s 22nd album was meant to be fun: a record full of primal riffs and mammoth choruses. But when tragedy repeatedly struck during its writing, the effervescent Canadian was forced to take stock. His grieving process has translated into PowerNerd, his most honest, vulnerable and challenging record yet.

Words: Phil Weller

Devin Townsend: emotionally exposed.

Images: Tanya Ghosh

“Circumstances dictated that my life went absolutely tits up. I thought it was just going to be a fun little party record, but it ended up being so emotionally intense!”

Take Devin Townsend’s 22nd studio album at face value and you’ve got one of prog’s most hardworking, tirelessly anthemic songwriters going gung ho at party metal anthems. But to scrape the surface is to pay PowerNerd a disservice. Its outer linings may have more in common with fist-pumping stadium rock anthems than King Crimson, but dig a bit deeper and you’ll find Hevy Devy at his most exposed after his plans for the record unravelled at the seams. The most extroverted of settings ended up being the perfect environment for Townsend to come to terms with his grief. summarises my personality in ways that maybe some of the other records don’t. “On one hand,” he continues, “it is a simple record: it’s Motörhead riffs and Bon Jovi choruses. But on the other, it was this soundtrack to this period of my life that just had a lot of loss. The combination was not what I expected. By the time I got to the [penultimate] song Goodbye, I was so fucking broken by the experience of losing people.”

PowerNerd is out now.

Townsend has never shirked away from discussing his mental health in interviews or his music, but it’s never been presented like it is on PowerNerd. Much of the record’s instrumental nucleus remains, with signature Devin PowerNerd is the first of a trio of records that present the man behind the music in a near-autobiographical way. It was dreamt up as a light-hearted “appetiser” before, in his own words, “the orchestral musical craziness of The Moth and the ambient loop-based weirdness of Axolotl”. Together, they will paint a picture of Townsend’s multi-dimensional musical DNA.