One of the things I’ve most admired about Devin Townsend over the years, is his open and honest approach to discussing his own mental health. From his bipolar diagnosis to his depression, his addictive personality and perfectionism to his sensitivity and overt empathy. He is frank in ways that are extremely refreshing and despite the abundance of modern-day slogans and platitudes relatively rare.
It was his 2019 album, the aptly titled Empath that took me from casual listener to fan. This was an artist taking the darkest and lightest parts of their personality and channeling them headlong into their creative pursuits. No-one is truly defined by one aspect of their persona or their life experience, so expecting an artist to stay in one lane across a long career is unreasonable. Where some artists like to shift in tone at stages across their catalogue (maturing to some, selling out to others), Townsend has kept multiple paths alive and as time has gone on seems increasingly comfortable to allow them to converge.
When I first listened to Empath it had quite a profound effect on me, allowing me to see how the calm and the chaos can live side by side. On repeated listens I couldn’t help but think that this blueprint of heavy music in a theatrical space could be taken much further. And with The Moth, a sprawling, epic, over the top, gloriously visceral intense pseudo rock opera, Devin Townsend has done just that. With 24 songs across just over an hour of music, he takes you on quite a musical and journey. The concept behind The Moth centres around personal self-discovery, facing the various facets of who you are without hiding from any of them. Embracing those changes, like the caterpillar who becomes the moth.
The album’s backstory is almost as fascinating as the concept the album is built around. Townsend had the idea for The Moth a decade before it came to fruition, but it always felt too ambitious and slightly out of reach. It was only when the Head of the North Netherlands’ Orchestra and Choir approached him with a separate idea, that the planets finally aligned. Their idea was to revisit his back catalogue and add some orchestral grandeur. Devin liked the idea of working together, but didn’t want to go backwards, he wanted to create something new together. He wanted to bring The Moth to life finally. And he’s done that here with aplomb.
An album that features Townsend’s regular band (Mike Keneally, James Leach, Darby Todd) additional vocalists Anneke van Giersbergen and Lynn Wu (OU), a full orchestra and a 60-person choir, still manages to feel deeply personal and very much one man’s singular vision. That’s quite the list of collaborators and there are others of note too. I’ve seen some mention of Steve Vai, who has a long history with Townsend, being a guest on the record. The liner notes only seem to mention him on a co-writing credit, so I do wonder if he laid down a guitar track which Townsend or Keneally then recreated. Another person with a co-writing credit on some tracks is Joseph Stevenson (who provided orchestration alongside Niels Bye Nielsen) but I couldn’t find any credits for him playing either.
Like musical theatre, it’s sometimes hard to get to grips with some songs without hearing them in context. Despite being excited about this release, the singles didn’t grab me initially. But this isn’t just a collection of songs or something that can be listened to in multiple sittings or on shuffle play. Even if you don’t fully get immersed into the concept, you will experience far more from each track by hearing it in sequence. Each shift of mood, each change of pace, each moment of quiet or of chaos, has earned their place from what went before it. Enter the City felt too big, too overpowering and too abstract as a lead single, with its Russian marching chanty choral feel. Hearing it within the album it’s a thing of pure joy that makes perfect sense. Home at Night which feels like it comes from a love scene in a long-lost, enchanting musical from days gone by equally takes on a new life when you hear it as intended. It’s captivatingly fragile, soothing and spinetingling in equal measure and showcases Townsend’s vocal versatility. The third single was constructed from two tracks, Prepare for War and The Big Snit and like Enter the City it feels huge when listened to standalone. The orchestra coupled with Anneke van Giersbergen’s co-vocals give this track an intense sense of scale and power, alongside the rhymical call to arms feel and provocative industrial edge.
Is this album for everyone? I probably do tick some reasonable boxes in the target market stakes. I’m just as happy in the more metal end of prog as I am the pastoral corner, and I do enjoy the trappings of a good rock opera style concept album, so yes it was already in my wheelhouse. I’ve enjoyed the likes of Rob Reed’s Kompendium record Beneath the Waves, Zio’s debut album Flower Toriana and the musical theatre classic Jesus Christ Superstar in the past. Like those albums this features multiple vocalists but one clear distinction I felt was that your point of view throughout is Townsend’s and the other characters feel supplemental, feeding into to his own journey rather than acting as an ensemble piece. I don’t think you need to know any of Townsend’s previous work, or to be particularly a metalhead or a musical theatre buff. You just need to take the time to listen to it all in one sitting and let yourself be taken on the journey with him and his many collaborators.
You don’t even have to be content with twenty-four tracks and about seventy minutes of music either. On the deluxe release, you get twice as much music and a quite different experience thanks to alternative versions of every track. The Afterlife versions lose the band and instead present each song with the orchestra and choir front and centre, from what I know so far that shift is dramatic. The Afterlife versions weren’t included in the digital review files, but The Afterlife versions of the aforementioned singles were on streaming services, so I listened to those before writing this.
There are layers you never realized were there and the emotional connection to each piece of music is quite different. It feels dramatic and cinematic in completely different ways to the version with the band also involved. I like both takes of the singles equally, for quite different reasons and I am extremely excited to be able to listen to the full Afterlife version of the album once it is released.
This is an album about metamorphosis, about looking inwards and understanding yourself and ultimately a journey to self-acceptance. If you allow yourself to really get into this record, you can feel each triumph, setback and awakening. It’s quite something.
I don’t know enough about Strapping Young Lad or other earlier work from Devin Townsend but based on what I’ve heard in recent years this feels like an artist reaching their creative zenith. Big, bold and ambitious, huge in scale and scope while simultaneously emotional and deeply personal, I can’t think of any other album quite like this. In a world of prog by numbers and an obsession with the Seventies heyday sound, it’s refreshing and powerful to hear such a distinctive piece of music with a clear and equally chaotic vision. I take my hat off to Devin Townsend, for the hard work, dedication and inner turmoil it must have taken to pull off this piece of work. What could be seen as negative personality traits, the darkness and perfectionism, the sensitivity and the all-consuming meticulousness are signs of a creative genius. And this I’d argue is his masterwork.
TRACK LISTING
01. Semi-prologue (2:52)
02. War Beyond Words (3:57)
03. The Moth (1:46)
04. Ode to My Eye (0:57)
05. Enter the City (2:34)
06. Covered by Causes (8:04)
07. Lexin (4:14)
08. Runaways (0:49)
09. A Proxy for God (1:24)
10. The Mothers (1:56)
11. Orion (5:46)
12. Stay There (2:25)
13. Home at Night (5:15)
14. Intermission (4:55)
15. Lexin Returns (0:48)
16. The Clergy (1:06)
17. Prepare for War (4:44)
18. The Big Snit (2:36)
19. Silver Princess (2:50)
20. A Life in Review (1:29)
21. Metamorphosis (2:11)
22. Stained Hearts (3:57)
23. Let Go (1:38)
24. We Don’t Deserve Dogs (1:40)
Total Time – 69:53
MUSICIANS
Devin Townsend – Lead Vocals, Guitar
Anneke van Giersbergen – Lead Vocals & Background Vocals
Lynn Wu – Lead Vocals
Jukka Iisakkila – Conductor
Noord Nederlands Orkest – Orchestra
Mike Keneally – Guitar, Synthesizer
James Leach – Bass Guitar
Darby Todd – Drums
Morgan Ågren – Drums
Aman Kohsla – Acoustic Guitar
Ben Searles – Synthesizer
– Choir:
Noord Nederlands Orkest / Devin Townsend / Grace Davidson / Rachel Haworth / Eleanor Minney / Heather Cairncross / Jeremy Budd / Nick Madden / Nigel Short / Jonathan Howard / Andrew Busher
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Inside Out Music
Country of Origin: Canada
Date of Release: 29th May 2026
LINKS
Devin Townsend – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp (Inside Out Music) | YouTube | X | Instagram
