The Devin Townsend Project “Addicted” (2009)

“Addicted” is one of those albums when a familiar metal guy decides go berserk, and makes an electronic-ish psychodelic album. When Townsend decided to go clean and start working on this project, I bet nobody guessed that this kind of an album can be the second part of his four-album project.

The album is not actually that weird, and if you are one of those clubbers who may dance to weird wave tunes, you may find it relatively easy to internalize. For the other folks, well, we need to work something out!

The Devin Townsend Project is a dare to show the entire world that Townsend is a multi-talented, inter-genre artist who can impress people with whatever he does. Well, frankly, he achieves his goal quite well.

The album opens with a guitarry song which smoothly introduces the very concept of the album. Screamy vocals of Townsend, mixed with some light female vocals backed up with psychedelic riffs welcomes you. Here, should I need to add that the female vocal belongs to Her Highness Anneke van Giersbergen! The very same song also gives you some hints about the pop-touches in the album: simple tunes, many repetitions, digestible rhythms etc.

Frankly, almost all my favorite songs in this album are those where Her Highness Anneke sang along with Townsend. “Bend It Like Bender” features some cute and pop melodies for which Her Highness is definitely a mistress. Her Highness’ touch clearly makes the album an easy-listening one, and gives it a fresh and lively face, and for a change, that can be rejuvenating.

The aforementioned touch of Her Highness makes the next song “supercrushed!” quite a great song. Well, you can always complain about how “poppy” that song is, and you’d be quite right. But, from a point of view that values originality and avant-gardism, I’d say that specifically this song shows a great promise. Nevertheless, the very same promise is not visible in the next song “hyperdrive!”. Even Her Highness vocals cannot make it an impressive piece of music. The song “In-Ah”, many reviewers would agree, totally sounds like a MTV-friendly piece of shit.

After all, the album is full of cheesy yet fun melodies backed up with talented guitar riffs and psychedelic rhythms and, needless to say, Her Highness superb vocals. The unique composition of all those elements makes “Addicted” a quite significant piece of music for all open minded metal folks with a piece of caution.

– Can Baskent

VITALS:

Release:  November 2009
Label:  HevyDevy Records
Avantgenre:  Psychedelic Pop Metal
Duration:  46:49
Origin:  Canada
Official site:  http://www.myspace.com/devintownsenddtb
Review online since:  15.02.2011 / 11:50:01

TRACKLIST:

01 – Addicted!
02 – Universe In A Ball!
03 – Bend It Like Bender!
04 – Supercrush!
05 – Hyperdrive!
06 – Resolve!
07 – Ih-Ah!
08 – The Way Home!
09 – Numbered!
10 – Awake!!

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